My Christmas
A bleak poem on the bittersweet memories of Christmas
In recent years, I’ve had mixed feelings about the entire holiday of Christmas. This year, I even had plans to simply not embrace the spirit of it at all. However, as December rolled in, I found myself unconsciously slipping into a seasonal mood. It was not nearly as strong as previous years and I did not try to force anything—I didn’t immediately start playing Christmas tunes and I have yet to watch any sort of Christmas movie. I simply accepted that it was December and I would be celebrating it as usual, but not making a big fuss over planning out everything to do with it. As a result, it got me thinking about what I value in terms of the holiday and this poem came out of it.
My Christmas is not the bleached white, Hallmark drivel backed by the brain-spearing noise the stations are paid to play.
It is not fed by saccharine sweets churned out by poison-dealers, served in blank doll-homes wrought from pine and plaster.
Its idols are not LIVE LAUGH LOVE in red and green and white with some plastic wreathes hung over the false hearth.
It does not smell like sickly sweet coffee and hairspray.
My Christmas is the bleak blue gloam, crawling in ere solstice-tide; the elder Yule pall o’er Barleycorn’s grave.
It is marked to me by Autumn’s stubble poking through the snow in rolling, sleeping flurry-dusted fields.
All the green and gold I can gather from the weald before it fades in the deep frost, ere the specters come.
Their voices are wind and their language is ice.
My Christmas does not hold vain hope for the New year centered ‘round late sales and leftovers, scraping for pale light.
It is the mourning of a dying year; a cold keen for a summer left behind; a dark funeral.
Is it the search for sanctuary in the old, wood churches away from those who swipe up the trav’ler.
They lurk outside these hallowed walls, shunning the hymns and candle smoke.
My Christmas is the spiral in the darkness, where waits the angel at its flame-gilt eye offering a light.
It is the last glimmer of sunlight over the frozen river running through the pines, the fading green gate.
It is one sigh of warmth breathed at the closing of this black month so still, drinking in the days as we drink our wassails.
The hearth will be kept until the new morning.
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Well done! I loved the line, "Their voices are wind and their language is ice." I have always found myself somewhat depressed this time of year also--I chalk it up to Seasonal Affective Disorder, But the light that spending some time with family brings, buoys my spirits once more. Then the seed catalogs arrive and I am as happy as the proverbial pig!
Whohoo! I can tell that Christmas is going to be festive this year 😁. I’ll bet if you let yourself see Hans Gruber falling from Nakatomi Tower, your holiday spirits will come forward just a bit more.
I did enjoy the poem though. Well done.