by New Yorker
Our gifts shall bring us home—not to beginnings
Nor always to the destination named
Upon our setting forth. Our gifts compel,
Master our ways, and lead us in the end
Where we are most ourselves, whether at last
To Solomon’s gaze or Sheba’s silken knees
Or winter pastures underneath a star,
Where angels spring like starlight in the trees.
1953
THE PASSING OF ALPHEUS W. HALLIDAY
(A DECEMBER TALE)
E. B. WHITE
Old Mr. Halliday, year upon year,
Showed small zest for the season of cheer.
At Santa’s name, at holly’s mention,
He sank in coils of apprehension.
A selfish man in his way of living,
He had no talent for gifts and giving;
The Yule, with its jumble of thistles and figs,
Was a lonely time in his bachelor digs.
Shopping for mistletoe, tinsel, and tree,
Alpheus Halliday still could foresee
Sitting in solitude, feet by the fire,
Opening things that he didn’t desire.
(He determines to correct this and give himself a walloping present.)
One grim noon, on his way to Saks,
Halliday halted, wheeled in his tracks,
Returned to the office, went up in the lift,
And ordered Miss Forbush wrapped as a gift.
Little Miss Forbush, out of Accounting,
Wrapped and sent (with his spirits mounting),
Sweet little Forbush, tidy and teeming,
Wreathed in the light of an old man’s dreaming.
(She is delivered to his home by United Parcel Service and placed under the tree.)
When Halliday wakened on Christmas morn,
He felt at peace and as though reborn.
The window was frosted, the gray clouds drifting,
A heavenly light, and the soft snow sifting.
He shaved and dressed and descended the stair
To see if old Santa had really been there.
Joyous and eager, he knelt at the tree,
Untied the red ribbon, and set his gift free.
He smoothened Miss Forbush and straightened her hair,
Then settled himself in his favorite chair.
Breathless with happiness, Halliday saw
That his gift to himself was a gift without flaw,
And though it was patently fraught with symbols,
It wasn’t a thing you could buy at Gimbel’s.
(She was something, all right.)
All the long morning, under the tree,
She lay there as quiet as quiet could be,
And there was a quality quite serene
About this relaxed and irregular scene.
There was never a hint of play or tussle;
Neither one of them moved a muscle.
The room had a clarity, cool and nice,
As though the two figures were sculptured in ice.
(I wish I had a photograph of it.)
All the long morning, in grateful surmise,
Alpheus Halliday studied his prize.
He seemed to be tracing, in Forbush’s trance,
Patterns of loveliness, strains of the dance;
He seemed to be dreaming and tending the fires
Of old and, I trust, imprecise desires.
He seemed to be seeking to capture again
Certain lost fragrances, woods after rain.
(Miss Forbush very sensibly turns into barley sugar.)
At noon, ere either one had stirred,
A timely miracle occurred:
In silence and with gentle grace
She shed her mortal carapace;
Her form, her face, her eyes, her hair
Were barley sugar now for fair,
And though it seem to you incredible,
Miss Forbush … well, was fully edible.
(Halliday is well known for his sweet tooth.)
Stiffly but hungrily, Halliday rose,
Picked up Miss Forbush, and sampled her toes.
Here was the answer to all his vague wishes:
Little Miss Forbush was simply delicious.
Anxious to linger, yet hot to devour,
He ate his way onward, hour after hour.
The window was frosted, the gray clouds drifting,
A heavenly light, and the soft snow sifting.
Just as he finished her brow and her hair,
Old Mr. Halliday died in his chair.
Too much free sugar and time that’s been spended—
Halliday’s life was most tranquilly ended.
Perfect his passing as sweet was his tooth,
He died from an overindulgence in youth.
(Let us not judge him too harshly in this season of mercy and forgiveness.)
1955
ALL’S NOËL THAT ENDS NOËL,
OR, INCOMPATIBILITY IS THE SPICE OF CHRISTMAS
OGDEN NASH
Do you know Mrs. Millard Fillmore Revere?
On her calendar, Christmas comes three hundred and sixty-five times a year.
Consider Mrs. Revere’s Christmas spirit; no one can match it—
No, not Tiny Tim or big Bob Cratchit.
Even on December 26th it reveals no rifts;
She is already compiling her list of next year’s gifts.
Her actions during the winter are conscientious and methodical,
Now snipping an advertisement from a newspaper, now clipping a coupon from a periodical.
In the spring she is occupied with mail-order catalogues from Racine and Provincetown and Richmond and Walla Walla,
Which offer a gallimaufry of gewgaws, gadgets, widgets, jiggers, trinkets, and baubles, postpaid for a dollar.
Midsummer evenings find her trudging home from clearance sales, balancing parcel upon parcel,
With blithe heart and weary metatarsal.
Soon appear the rolls of garish paper and the spools of gaudy ribbon,
And to describe the decline and fall of Mr. Revere it would take the pen of a Gibbon.
Poor Mr. Revere—such harbingers of Christmas do not brighten him,
They simply frighten him.
He cringes like a timid hobo when a fierce dog raises its hackles at him;
Wherever he steps, ribbons wind around his ankles and paper crackles at him.
He feels himself threatened by Christmas on all fronts;
Shakespeare had Mr. Revere in mind when he wrote, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.”
These are the progressively ominous hints of impending doom:
First, he is forbidden to open a certain drawer, then a certain closet, and, finally, a certain room.
If Mr. Revere looks slightly seedy as he goes his daily rounds
It’s because his clean shirts and socks are now out of bounds.
Indeed, the only reason he gets by,
He remembers previous years and has provided himself with haberdashery he can drip and dry.
The days of September, October, November are like globules of water on the forehead of a tortured prisoner dropping;
Each is another day on which he has done no Christmas shopping.
At this point the Devil whispers that if he puts it off until Christmas Eve the shops will be emptier,
A thought than which nothing could be temptier,
But Christmas Eve finds him bedridden with a fever of nearly ninety-nine degrees, and swaddled in blankets up to his neck,
So on Christmas morn he has nothing for Mrs. Revere but a kiss and a check,
Which somehow works out fine, because she enjoys being kissed
And the check is a great comfort when she sits down on December 26th to compile her next year’s list.
1957
“Miss Harwood, please see to it that the hall
s are decked.”
(photo credit 40.1)
SAINT NICHOLAS,
MARIANNE MOORE
might I, if you can find it, be given
a chameleon with tail
that curls like a watch spring; and vertical
on the body—including the face—pale
tiger-stripes, about seven
(the melanin in the skin
having been shaded from the sun by thin
bars; the spinal dome
beaded along the ridge
as if it were platinum)?*
If you can find no striped chameleon,
might I have a dress or suit—
I guess you have heard of it—of qiviut?
And, to wear with it, a taslon shirt, the drip-dry fruit
of research second to none,
sewn, I hope, by Excello,
as for buttons to keep down the collar-points, no.
The shirt could be white—
and be “worn before six,”
either in daylight or at night.
But don’t give me, if I can’t have the dress,
a trip to Greenland, or grim
trip to the moon. The moon should come here. Let him
make the trip down, spread on my dark floor some dim
marvel, and if a success
that I stoop to pick up and wear,
I could ask nothing more. A thing yet more rare,
though, and different,
would be this: Hans von Marées’
St. Hubert, kneeling with head bent,
form erect—in velvet, tense with restraint—
hand hanging down; the horse, free.
Not the original, of course. Give me
a postcard of the scene—huntsman and divinity—
hunt-mad Hubert startled into a saint
by a stag with a Figure entined.
But why tell you what you must have divined?
Saint Nicholas, O Santa Claus,
would it not be the most
prized gift that ever was!
1958
*Pictured in Life, September 15, 1958, with a letter from Dr. Doris M. Cochran, Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians, National Museum, Washington, D.C.
THE MAGUS
JAMES DICKEY
It is time for the others to come.
This child is no more than a god.
No cars are moving this night.
The lights in the houses go out.
I put these out with the rest.
From his crib, the child begins
To shine, letting forth one ray
Through the twelve simple bars of his bed
Down into the trees, where two
Long-lost other men shall be drawn
Slowly up to the brink of the house,
Slowly in through the breath on the window.
But how did I get in this room?
Is this my son, or another’s?
Where is the woman to tell me
How my face is lit up by his body?
It is time for the others to come.
An event more miraculous yet
Is the thing I am shining to tell you.
This child is no more than a child.
1960
THE CHRISTMAS CACTUS
L. M. ROSENBERG
All during the Christmas rush
I waited for the thing to come alive.
Eyed it while I gift-wrapped scarves,
withered it with scorn as I threw
the green and silver bundles under the tree.
By New Year’s
I vowed to be happy
living with just stems.
Then one day in February,
the worst month of the year—
making up in misery what it lacks in length—
the blooms shot out,
three ragged cerise bells that rang
their tardy hallelujahs on the sill.
Late bloomers,
like the girls that shine
and shine at long last
at the spring dance
from their corner of the gym.
1981
(photo credit 43.1)
ICICLES
ROBERT PINSKY
A brilliant beard of ice
Hangs from the edge of the roof
Harsh and heavy as glass.
The spikes a child breaks off
Taste of wool and the sun.
In the house, some straw for a bed,
Circled by a little train,
Is the tiny image of God.
The sky is fiery blue,
And a fiery morning light
Burns on the fresh deep snow:
Not one track in the street.
Just as the carols tell
Everything is calm and bright:
The town lying still,
The street cold and white.
Is only one child awake,
Breaking the crystal chimes?—
Knocking them down with a stick,
Leaving the broken stems.
1983
CHRISTMAS IN QATAR
CALVIN TRILLIN
(A new holiday classic, for those tiring of “White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells”)
VERSE:
The shopping starts, and every store’s a zoo.
I’m frantic, too: I haven’t got a clue
Of what to get for Dad, who’s got no hobby,
Or why Aunt Jane, who’s shaped like a kohlrabi,
Wants frilly sweater sets, or where I’ll find
A tie my loudmouthed Uncle Jack won’t mind.
A shopper’s told it’s vital he prevails:
Prosperity depends on Christmas sales.
“Can’t stop to talk,” I say. “No time. Can’t halt.
Economy could fail. Would be my fault.”
CHORUS:
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar,
Or someplace else that Santa won’t find handy.
Qatar will do, although, Lord knows, it’s sandy.
I need to get to someplace pretty far.
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.
VERSE:
Young Cousin Ned, his presents on his knees,
Says Christmas wrappings are a waste of trees.
Dad’s staring, vaguely puzzled, at his gift.
And Uncle Jack, to give us all a lift,
Now tells a Polish joke he heard at work.
So Ned calls Jack a bigot and a jerk.
Aunt Jane, who knows that’s true, breaks down and cries.
Then Mom comes out to help, and burns the pies.
Of course, Jack hates the tie. He’ll take it back.
That’s fair, because I hate my Uncle Jack.
CHORUS:
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Tibet,
Or any place where folks cannot remember
That there is something special in December.
Tibet’s about as far as you can get.
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Tibet.
VERSE:
Mom’s turkey is a patriotic riddle:
It’s red and white, plus bluish in the middle.
The blue’s because the oven heat’s not stable.
The red’s from ketchup Dad snuck to the table.
Dad says he loves the eyeglass stand from me—
Unless a sock rack’s what it’s meant to be.
“A free-range turkey’s best,” Ned says. “It’s pure.”
“This hippie stuff,” Jack says, “I can’t endure.”
They say goodbye, thank God. It’s been a strain.
At least Jack’s tie has got a ketchup stain.
CHORUS:
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Rangoon,
Or any place where Christmas is as noisy
As Buddhist holidays might be in Boise.
I long to hear Der Bingle smoothly croon,
“I’m dreaming
of a Christmas in Rangoon”—
Or someplace you won’t hear the Christmas story,
And reindeer’s something eaten cacciatore.
I know things can’t go on the way they are.
I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.
1994
TREE WITH ORNAMENTS BY MY MOTHER
ELIZABETH MACKLIN
It could be a wintering bear this year,
long furred & yet unclassified fat fir, rearing
uncrouched by the couch, a bear cub, my first—
a Douglas?—first ever long-needle pine & name unknown.
So thickly fern-broom-, borzoi- or yak-feathered,
whisks under eaves, that ornaments disappear:
the forest of branches has made an interior,
all of her ornaments inside in, and not shown.
But let them try to remain hidden: glass-bird
light paint glows like a house in the woods at four,
snowbound-warm and excited given. It hides this year
but desires to be seen—makes no grief—to be spoken.
This year’s tree makes its scent felt across the yards
in between; the past at last has remade the present. Hark
not to the shining idols but to their singular deity, inward
invisible bird fir fragrance, who says they could even be broken.
1999
25.XII.1993
JOSEPH BRODSKY
For a miracle, take one shepherd’s sheepskin, throw
In a pinch of now, a grain of long ago,
And a handful of tomorrow. Add by eye
A little bit of ground, a piece of sky,
And it will happen. For miracles, gravitating
To earth, know just where people will be waiting,
And eagerly will find the right address
And tenant, even in a wilderness.
Or, if you’re leaving home, switch on a new
Four-pointed star in Heaven as you do,
To light a vacant world with steady blaze
And follow you forever with its gaze.
(Translated, from the Russian, by Richard Wilbur)
1999
NATIVITY POEM
JOSEPH BRODSKY
Imagine striking a match that night in the cave:
Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze