This is my third annual Christmas Poem post. You can read
the others here:
And on a related note, last year’s Christmas
Carol post.
Other posts on Christmas:
***
The previous Christmas poem posts included Ogden
Nash, who apparently loved writing about Christmas. In a curmudgeonly way,
of course.
Complaining about Christmas is as traditional as Christmas
itself, from what I can tell. The Puritans whined about it, and went so far as
to ban it during Oliver Cromwell’s government. This went exactly as well as you
would expect, and was one reason the Puritans lost power soon after Cromwell’s
death. Dickens railed against the commercialization of Christmas, most notably
in A Christmas Carol, which remains one of the best sermons ever written. (And
one that American Evangelicals seem increasingly determined to ignore…)
Ogden Nash too felt that Christmas was too commercial. This
poem was written in the 1950s, which, ironically, is the era that today’s
curmudgeons hold up as the last pure era in history. Apparently, the golden age
exists only in our own faulty memories.
I Remember Yule by Ogden Nash
I guess I am just an old fogey.
I guess I am headed for the last
roundup, so come along little dogey.
I can remember when winter was
wintery and summer was estival;
I can even remember when Christmas
was a family festival.
Yes, I can remember when Christmas
was an occasion for fireside rejoicing
and
general good will.
And now it is just the day that
it’s only X shopping days until.
I can remember when we knew
Christmas was coming without being reminded
by
the sponsor
And the announcer.
What, five times a week at 8:15
P.M., do the herald angels sing?
That a small deposit now will buy
you an option on a genuine diamond ring.
What is the message we receive with
Good King Wenceslas?
That if we rush to the corner of
Ninth and Main we can get that pink mink
housecoat
very inexpensceslaus.
I know what came upon the midnight
clear to our backward parents,
but
what comes to us?
A choir imploring us to Come all ye
faithful and steal a 1939 convertible
at
psychoneurotic prices from Grinning Gus.
Christmas is a sitting duck for
sponsors, it’s so commercial,
And yet so noncontroversial.
Well, you reverent sponsors
redolent of frankincense and myrrh, come
smear
me with bear–grease and call me an un-American hellion.
This is my declaration of
independence and rebellion.
This year I’m going to disconnect
everything electrical in the house and spend
the
Christmas season like Tiny Tim and Mr. Pickwick;
You make me sickwick.
The more things change…
I myself am no big fan of commercialism. I do love
Christmas, however, and many of the modern trappings. I love the music. (Most
of it. Could definitely do without “Christmas Shoes.”) I enjoyed playing in the
local orchestra when Mannheim Steamroller came to Bakersfield this year. The kids and I put
thousands of lights on our house. We watch cheesy Christmas movies. I love
finding presents for family. And don’t get me started on the food.
But all these are empty without the real core of the
holiday. As a Christian, the incarnation is a beautiful and central belief. God
came and became one of us, suffering as we do, and triumphing over sin and
death. But the life and teachings of Christ are not just about a baby born, or
an ultimate sacrifice. In Saint Luke’s Gospel, Christ himself announces his
ministry as follows:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has
anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim
freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the
oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
A bit radical, yes? Pretty much the complete opposite of the
political goals of American Evangelicalism, I would say.
On that note, let me introduce Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy.
Studdert Kennedy was a British chaplain during World War One, known for giving
comfort to injured and dying soldiers. (Also cigarettes - times have changed…)
The horrors of war haunted him, and he devoted the rest of his life to social
justice causes, before working himself to death at age 45. He saw first hand
the oppressive factory systems of the 1920s, and wrote a number of books
railing against the evils of unbridled capitalism and greed. One of his most
famous lines is:
"If finding God in our churches leads to us losing Him
in our factories, then better we tear down those churches for God must hate the
sight of them."
These words still ring true today. When he died, thousands
of the poor flocked to his funeral. But he was denied burial at Westminster
Abbey because of his political views.
His poems are probably better known than his prose today. I
was introduced to this one by a Symphony colleague, at a Lenten concert earlier
this year.
When Jesus Came to Birmingham by G. A.
Studdert Kennedy
When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through
hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of
thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel
days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him,
they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and
they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the
street, and left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, 'Forgive them,
for they know not what they do, '
And still it rained the winter rain
that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the
streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall,
and cried for Calvary.
This so perfectly expresses how I feel about the social
darwinism that has been wholeheartedly embraced by most of those who claim my
faith. Oh, we don’t kill people anymore. We just deny them healthcare, living
wages, protection against abusive
employers; turn
away those fleeing war and poverty; look away as they are killed
by the police; and more. Oh, it’s not really killing them, just letting
nature take its course…
And then we sit in our churches and pretend that God is
there, but not where the working poor live. Maybe it is time to tear down our
churches.
For some reason, I never read Madeleine L’Engle when I was a
kid, despite the fact that we owned A
Wrinkle In Time. You can read my thoughts on discovering it and A
Wind In The Door if you like. Anyway, I hadn’t really thought of her as a
poet, but somewhere I ended up running across this little gem.
The Risk of Birth by
Madeleine L’Engle
This is no time for a child to be
born,
With the earth betrayed by war and
hate
And a comet slashing the sky to
warn
That time runs out and the sun
burns late.
That was no time for a child to be
born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor and truth were trampled by
scorn-
Yet here did the Savior make his
home.
When is the time for love to be
born?
The inn is full on the planet
earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn-
Yet Love still takes the risk of
birth.
I remind myself of this regularly these days, having brought
five children into a world more broken than I realized at the time, a world
where those naming the name of the Christmas Child would embrace the crushing
grip of Rome.
And yet, love does take the risk of birth. While we were (and are) still hating
each other, Christ came with a radical message of an upside down Kingdom, the
very antithesis of Empire. Some of us still seek that.
The final selection for this year is by the “Poet Laureate
of Twitter.” No, not the narcissist that got elected. The poet Brian Bilston. (“I am
Cinna the poet!”) Anyway, this one has been making the rounds among some of my
literary friends, so I thought I would share it. It does make me smile.
Word Needles by
Brian Bilston
***
Anyway, while my heart remains heavy about the state of the
world and of American Christianity, my hope remains in that pivotal moment,
when God incarnate came to earth to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and
point us to a better way. May His kingdom come!
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