'Tis the Season

This is a Christmas poem I wrote, starting in the 2000's, at a verse or two a year it took nearly a decade. It aimed at a sense of timelessness, although events intruded in a couple of stanzas. Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Hymn in Twelve Verses.

May this season of light

Not do you in with mercantile excess,

Though willfully it might,

And find you in duress

Among clothing racks,

The walls of toys,

And that seasonal joy of joys

The mind bending muzak.

While St Nick is a jolly old soul,

With his ho ho ho and jiggling red tum,

To mollify his threat of black coal

It is the lessons of Christendom

That the yule respects;

Be you believer or skeptic,

Oblivious, harried, or ascetic,

Mind not what the marketeer expects.

‘Tis the season to remember miracles do occur

That require no breakage of nature’s symmetry;

You can be of that quite sure;

Simply gaze upon the Christmas tree,

And take a moment to reflect

Upon how it is we came to be alive;

How in all our colors and creeds we strive

To find fellowship in how we connect.

For finding between us a common thread,

While not necessarily an easy task,

Need not be a source of dread;

In this, the time to open hearts and ask:

What gives definition beyond a humdrum life,

If not the contrasts between thee and thou,

Or white snow upon darkened spruce bough;

‘Tis it not the time to celebrate beauty above strife?

During these long winter nights

There is time to dream and ponder;

To imagine a world where all is right,

But would it be such a wonder?

To live a slack life without tension,

Where challenges are of no consequence;

Where brilliance begets no more than incompetence;

Where the valley is the peak of no ascension.

As days now again lengthen toward the sun,

We see in nature’s grandness our humility;

Life’s a sacred vow that holds the One

Is the All that lasts for an eternity,

For our mortal sojourn will not be seen from afar,

As measured against the immensity of times total pull;

So we need live this life with hearts full,

And faces turned to our lovely, slowly dying star.

Now’s the time to take a moment for reflectance,

What chance does have tradition against the rust

Of the ever creeping tide of decadence.

Against the hollow ringing of commercialistic lust.

It is the lone voice, joined, and raised in song;

A chorus of steadfastness and fellowship in humanity;

That sings of deeper faith in the Christmas pageantry,

And cherishes all voices in harmony warm and strong.

Though we may wish it not so with all our might

Terrible deeds suddenly reveal life’s travails,

That tear apart our sense of what’s right;

Yet instill the need to never let insanity prevail,

But draw sanctuary from the civilized world,

That celebrates a wiser myth to turn the tide

Against the inner demons that seek to divide,

And chant a hymn to justice, our salvation unfurled.

So onward we praise the world dynamic;

The great Earth, the grand Earth, full Earth,

Where all life is the panoramic,

Upon which we find in our lives -- daily worth;

Not always as we would have it so;

More often as only we wish it could be,

But as it, as it is, as it always shall be,

So long as our communal breath shall show.

We oft celebrate the season with cheer;

At parties where gaudy ties,

And goofy hats appear,

And can’t help but wonder, is this wise?

Then head homeward wrapped in felicity,

Passing along frozen lanes in the night;

Occasioning upon a house alight;

Candles in windows, beauty in simplicity.

When we upon the special morn’ awake,

To wrapped presents ‘neath the tree,

We will gladly give penance a break

That the gifts may be torn open with glee,

For without some pagan spirit,

Our dreams would grow stale,

Like a relative’s too oft told tale,

Oh! celebrate a respite from meddlesome merit.

And at day’s end would we find our way back,

Tracing the arc of a wending path

Along memories oft faded track,

Where we harken an ancestors cry or laugh;

Forget not how we came to this place,

In the mixt American Christmas night,

May humility guide our sense’s right,

Let the birth of one,

       be the birth of all,

              in lasting grace.