Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.

Lynd contrasts adult solemnity with the vivid, unselfconscious attention children bring to play. By imagining a “philosophy of toys,” he suggests that many adult concerns are inflated by habit and social pressure, while toys—objects made for imaginative use—reveal a truer scale of value: delight, curiosity, and presence. Christmas Day becomes a rare social permission-slip for grown men to drop performative seriousness and re-enter a state of lively responsiveness. The line also carries Lynd’s characteristic essayistic irony: he is not rejecting thought, but proposing that wisdom might consist in taking play seriously and taking much of “serious” life less so.