THE CULTIVATION OF CHRISTMAS

If I said, I don’t believe in Christmas anymore,
(Words breaking into my thought the other day)
My children would laugh, probably, and say
We don’t either Dad, thinking of angels singing
To shepherds in a wintery field, or of the old man
And the chimney— remembering that on the roof
In winter once, I peered down the stack, hallooed
Into the sitting room, pretending he’d just arrived,
And they so believing it, open then to all stories
Being true, that I felt their sudden consternation
And had to reassure them in my familiar voice.
      But of course that’s not what I meant. Perhaps
Those words arose against the unspoken prospect
Of all the planning that prepares for, or plagues
A single day—too much thought for that morrow,
The where, the with whom, and what,
Things to be found, and bought, and wrapped,
The house tidied, and cleaned, and polished,
Meals to be thought about and bought for,
So that even what we all look forward to,
Putting up and decorating the Christmas tree,
Becomes yet another task. Thus at the prospect
A weariness overwhelms the sense of wonder
Proper to the day.
                                For I am conscious
That we do expect something of the season,
Some brief, bright change in us, a joy
Not to be had on other days. But I also ask,
Where did that wonder begin, why does it belong to us,
Fearing, almost, that what we’re in admiration of
Is expectation without an object, the afterglow
Of childhood, when presents and parcels arriving,
Snow sometimes, and the tree glittering with light,
Was everything the wonder in us could want for.
And though these things still often are delightful,
In truth we know they cannot be the substance
Of that something more than sense our hearts
Seemingly ask of us.
                                     But is that it then?
Things and sensations the source of our wonder,
To hold any other kind of hope a mystifying
Of the mundane or material, a jesting with truth,
The brunt of reality simply too much for us?
It may be, it just may be. But other moments
Haunt me still. In the end, how can I explain
My damaged brother’s impassioned singing
Of snow had fallen, snow on snow, the tune
Lost in him, a rumbling, bass-note drone,
Saying to me afterwards, he loved that carol,
Shaking his head, puzzled by what he felt,
And my unkind thought, that he at forty-two
Who still wants boyhood toys for Christmas
Content to stuff himself with food and telly,
How could he know what those sung words
Evoke in me—nostalgia, yearning—for what
And what to call it, I don’t know, an emotion
In which I feel most nearly what I am,
Or what I want to be. And yet he knew:
We are, in that, and so much else, the same.
      And then there is snow itself: not the stuff
That ushers in a bitter winter, threatening
Life and livelihood, but English snow,
The stuff that stays a few days every year,
Floating gently down as if arriving home,
Settling everywhere, flake upon flake
Nestling together on a grey afternoon,
Quietly changing the world before us.
      After such a fall, one cold and crystal night,
Leaving our comfortable fireside for a while,
We walked out into the crisp and glistening snow
The full moon bright above us, the star-filled sky
Not black but deepest blue and cloudless,
Nowhere dark but in the shadows of the moon
The land white from field to field, bright
To the hills beyond, brown hedgerows
Strung out across the snow, tracing remnants
Of a daylight world, cattle, men and mud,
The timely noises of a working life, now
Unimaginable under the still gaze of the moon,
Peace and silence spreading over the white hills,
Settling across the counties of England, all quiet
I’d like to think, in Gloucester, and Hereford,
And Worcester.
                             Words struggling to find the gist
Of what we felt walking in a snowlit garden, words
Not just to remind me of the transitory beauty,
Nor of the delight at seeing our world differently,
But underneath all this something unsettling
Something seemingly asked of us, that same mood
In which we sing of bleak mid-winter, a change
To match the change we’ve wondered at, asking us
To imagine other ways of being, tell another story,
Even an old story that only children take as true.
So I may not believe in Christmas anymore,
But what snow can do fills me with gladness.