“Christmas – what is it for you that’s especially unforgettable? Is it the excitement of going round the shops looking for presents, gazing into decorated windows, wanting nearly everything? Is it decorating the tree, or getting ready for the school nativity play? Singing carols? Opening presents? Is it turkey? Christmas pudding? More pudding?
Perhaps Christmas itself is really a gift – under all those shiny wrappings. Suppose we unwrap Christmas to find out what it is. First we take off the shiny covering of buying and selling, then all that bulky eating and drinking. Next there’s a silvery wrapping of trees and presents and cards with robins on, and under that we find beautiful carols and music. Inside the carols and music we can already guess what our gift is. We open it, and find simply – a story about love. A smashing present, guaranteed for at least twenty centuries.
What does Christmas give you? What do you remember about your Christmases? What can you imagine about other people’s? Can you even imagine it without the kind of things you’ve just thought of? Perhaps it’s not so hard to imagine, if you know of people who don’t have enough presents, uncles, puddings, crackers, love.
Poets remember their own Christmases, but they also imagine other people’s. The robin would be a good Christmas poet if he could talk. He’s seen them all…”
by Robert Hull
Real Life Christmas Card
Robin, I watch you. You are perfect robin –
Except, shouldn’t you be perched on a space handle?
Robin, you watch me. Am I perfect man – except,
Shouldn’t I have a trap in my pocket, a gun in my hand?
I, too, am in my winter plumage, not unlike yours,
Except, the red is in my breast, not on it.
You sing your robbing song, I my man song. They’re different,
But they mean the same: winter, territory, greed.
Will we survive, bold eyes, to pick
The seeds in the ground, the seeds in my mind?
The snow man thinks so. Look at his silly smile
Slushily spilling down the scarf I gave him.
By Norman MacCaig
Books at Bibby Line Group 