As a student of English literature, I have studied, analyzed, recited, presented, interpreted, written essays on (etc etc etc) POETRY. I have learned to really love it, so here is a poem I always pull out during this time (I have notebooks full of poems I have come across over the years). It reminds me of my childhood Christmas, at my home church growing up. I cannot remember the gifts I got, but I remember the carols, the parties, the memories and the love. I also remember being terrified of the Christmas concert (the Sunday School classes always collaborated to put on a big show). I was the star, because I was so shy --- my Mom made this amazing costume with Christmas lights, so I wore a star that actually lit up! Donal Hall seems to put my memories into a beautiful poem:
Christmas party at the South Danbury Church by Donald Hall
December twenty-first
we gather at the white Church festoonedred and green, the tree flashing
green-red lights beside the altar.
After the children of Sunday School
recite Scripture, sing songs,
and scrape out solos,
they retire to dress for the finale,
to perform the pageant
again: Mary and Joseph kneeling
cradleside, Three Kings,
shepherds and shepherdesses. Their garments
are bathrobes with mothholes,
cut down from the Church's ancestors.
Standing short and long,
they stare in all directions for mothers,
sisters and brothers,
giggling and waving in recognition,
and at the South Danbury
Church, a moment before Santa
arrives with her ho-hos
and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark
of whole silence, God
enters the world as a newborn again.
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