More Christmas stuff!

For this post, I will share two of my favorite Christmas poems. One is an old, old favorite, part of which I originally experienced from the "The Muppets and John Denver: a Christmas Together" album (Which I remember fondly and nostalgically and remember being irritated when I was in college and someone was making fun of it).

It is:

Noël: Christmas Eve 1913

A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village in the water’d valley
Distant music reach’d me peals of bells aringing:
The constellated sounds ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above with stars was spangled o’er.

Then sped my thoughts to keep that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields and marvelling could not tell
Whether it were angels or the bright stars singing.
Now blessed be the towers that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer unto God for our souls
Blessed be their founders (said I) an’ our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ in the belfries tonight
With arms lifted to clutch the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above and the mad romping din.

But to me heard afar it was starry music
Angels’ song, comforting as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me by the riches of time
Mellow’d and transfigured as I stood on the hill
Heark’ning in the aspect of th’ eternal silence

-- Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate, United Kingdom (1913)

I love the evocative images of that poem. I love the idea of an old Britain (one that no longer exists and perhaps one that never really existed) full of "good country folk" who ring the bells to celebrate Christ's birth.

And my second, newer favorite:

A Christmas sonnet
for one in doubt

While you that in your sorrow disavow
Service and hope, see love and brotherhood
Far off as ever, it will do no good
For you to wear his thorns upon your brow
For doubt of him. And should you question how
To serve him best, he might say, if he could,
"Whether or not the cross was made of wood
Whereupon you nailed me, is no matter now."

Though other saviors have in older lore
A Legend, and for older gods have died -
Though death may wear the crown it always wore
And ignorance still be the sword of pride -
Something is here that was not here before,
And strangely has not yet been crucified.
- Edward Arlington Robinson

Yes, Edwin Arlington Robinson. Whom I knew mainly for "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy" and all those other somewhat-comic poems about human nature. But the man was apparently quite a prolific poet; it seems a bit sad to me that it IS mainly "Richard Cory" and company that we moderns know him for.

For me, this poem (at least at the start) sums up some of the frustration I have with what they call "Nuffers" on Cute Overload - people who would choose to rain on others' parades, who would tell those who are happy that it is unseemly to be so because there are others, elsewhere in the world who are starving/at war/not free/poor/whatever. That we should not laugh, because others somewhere are crying.

And perhaps it's the Pollyanna side of me, but I prefer to look at what good people HAVE done - not that we have failed to achieve perfect brotherhood and peace (because we never will, and even Jesus said that the poor will always be with us). And I prefer to focus on what is good, if there be good.

For me, it is as the words Dickens put into the mouth of (perhaps) his most famous creation: "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." And I cannot put up with the killjoys or wet blankets who would tell me I am overdoing it, or doing it wrong, or somehow grinding my affluence in the face of those who are less so by the simple fact that I choose to enjoy things.