The best words for Christmas are from T.S. Eliot’s marvelous poem, “The journey of the Magi.” They are not words particularly full of merriment or traditional good cheer or festive laughter. You should read the whole poem, but here are some opening lines:
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter………..
Then the camel-men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor
and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of
shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears saying
That this was folly.”
This poem reminds us that in the beginning Christmas was very much more about faith than it was about festivity – a hard journey, not just a happy outing. And the men who made that first journey to attend the poor village birth were tempted by frivolity:
“There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet”
And yet in the end it was not such easy joys that they discovered and which haunted them forever that first Christmas day. It is a beautiful poem.
And so, amid the fruit punch and the rum-soaked cake, and the aromatic garlic pork and the undone gift wrapping blowing in the wind, and amid the laughter of friends and the hugs of bright-eyed children, whose time this really is, and amid the songs and joyful carols and the dancing still to come, and around the tables loaded with the fruits of this good earth – go out for a moment in some quiet place, entirely by yourself, and think of the hard journey other people are making of it – no sparklers or 15-year old for them for sure, and goodwill nowhere near. Think of Haiti. Think of Ukraine. An article I once read compared the 800 million people who live in the 10 richest countries in the world with the same number, 800 million, their brothers and sisters, who every night fall asleep starving – Christmas night for them no different to any other grim and desolate night.
Here is another Christmas poems I like – written by an English woman poet U.A. Fanthorpe.
BC : AD
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
And, since this is the time of goodwill which lies at the heart of love, let me tell you two lines from John Donne which we should never forget:
“Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, monthes, which are the rags of time.”
Love endures, yet it has no duration, since duration involves time and love “no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday.” It melts the poles of past and future, time’s east and west. And now, at Christmas, it remains, as always, the best gift by far to share.
