by New Yorker
But then Father Urban didn’t take the opportunity, after all. He let it pass. He decided that if Wilf would just leave it at that, so would he. He would have taken great pleasure in asserting himself, in demanding and getting simple justice, but he was gaining more this way. And wasn’t that what it all came down to? Christmas meant peace—not to men but to men of good will. It was hard, though—very hard—to see someone like Wilf having it both ways, and at Father Urban’s expense.
Wilf, having restored the bambino to the straw, plugged in the circuit that lit the blue bulb and started up the animals and shepherds, and then he went back to his chair. He picked up the paper, and, boldly meeting Father Urban’s gaze, he said, “Just shows how wrong we can be sometimes.”
We! This was too much for Father Urban’s good will. There were worse things than war. He glared at Jack—the peacemaker, who looked at him now—staring Jack down, his eyes following Jack’s back to the checkerboard. There he saw a surprising opportunity, and he decided to deal with Jack first. With his only king, Father Urban jumped this way and that, taking a dreadful toll. He had won the game.
“Why didn’t I see that!” From the way Jack said it, Father Urban knew that Jack had seen it all, had offered himself and his checkers for sacrifice. Thereupon the desire to deal with Wilf died in Father Urban.
Father Urban, and perhaps Wilf, too, sensed the rare peace now reigning among them, but Jack rejoiced in it visibly. Still, a moment later, it was Jack who broke the spell. “You know, Urban, I don’t feel right about those animals,” he said—not, Father Urban knew, to be critical but just to be saying something. For a moment, they had all been lifted up, and this was Jack’s way of letting them down lightly to earth. “I’ve always understood that what heat there was at Bethlehem came from the animals. By rights, they should be closer to the Holy Family. Of course, I realize that’s impossible in this particular case.”
Father Urban looked over at the tree, at the hamper of food and liquor. “Let’s open one of Billy’s bottles,” he said.
1957
CHRISTMAS WEEK
PARKE CUMMINGS
When saplings pass for Christmas trees,
And glowing bulbs of red and green
Bedeck the Strands and Rivolis,
And here and there a wreath is seen,
When everywhere Salvation Nells
To passers-by their carols sing,
And rub their hands and toll their bells,
While castanets with quarters ring,
When theatres proffer matinées
Throughout the week, and actors groan,
And reminisce of better days,
And weaklings dread to shop alone,
When markets teem with greens and meat,
Their floors bestrewn with sawdust clean,
And office-boys are swift and neat,
And messengers alert and keen,
When bankers quote the Golden Rule,
And visitors enjoyment seek,
And lads and maids are home from school,
New York’s engulfed in Christmas week.
1926
CHRISTMAS EVE
(AUSTRALIA, 1943)
KARL J. SHAPIRO
The wind blows hot. English and foreign birds
And insects different as their fish excite
The would-be calm. The usual flocks and herds
Parade in permanent quiet out of sight,
And there one crystal like a grain of light
Sticks in the crucible of day and cools.
A cloud burnt to a crisp at some great height
Sips at the dark condensing in deep pools.
I smoke and read my Bible and chew gum,
Thinking of Christ and Christmas of last year,
And what those quizzical soldiers standing near
Ask of the war and Christmases to come,
And, sick of causes and the tremendous blame,
Curse lightly and pronounce Your serious name.
1943
“Fifty-ninth Street, Columbus Circle. Change for the B, D, and uptown express. Step lively, watch the closing doors, and once the train is in motion start singing ‘Good King Wenceslas.’”
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
JOHN CIARDI
The stores wore Christmas perfectly
With little bells to ring for sales.
In neon, the Nativity
Proclaimed the spirit never fails.
Accessory to Monsieur’s paunch,
Madame’s embezzled look
Harassed the velvet screen where Punch
(Watched by wide-eyed kids) forsook
Judy. Forced to abdicate,
She did a wonderful children’s trick
And disappeared in billingsgate
Like a chattering monkey-on-a-stick,
And reappeared (gift-wrapped) to be
The nephew on the itemized list.
Monsieur, impatient, turned to flee,
But Madame had him by the wrist:
“Three more, my dear, and we are done.
Now, please be patient.” Box by box,
The puppets waited one by one:
Judy next to Goldilocks,
Pluto by Pinocchio,
Mickey next to Jack-Be-Quick.
Neon, pink upon the snow,
Made of every flake a wick
Till the last item itemized
By Madame, and the little bells,
Collateral to the surprised
Morning look of boys and girls,
Made carols on the children’s air
And brought a smile to Tiny Tim
And to Madame and to Monsieur,
Making a sudden light in her,
Ten years’ difference in him,
And so much difference in me
I’m ready to forgive you all
For what you’ll turn around and be,
Starting at nine the usual
Morning after memory.
1946
CHRISTMAS EVE
JOHN CIARDI
Salvation’s angel in a tree
Stared out at Blake, and stares at me
From zodiacs of colored bells,
And colored lights, and lighted shells,
A cherub’s face above a sheet:
No arms, no torso, and no feet,
But winged and wired against the Fall,
And a paper halo over all—
A nineteen-hundred-year-old doll
In a drying tree. What does it see?
The house is sleeping; there’s only me
In the cellophane snow by the lethal toys
That wait all night for the eager boys:
Metal soldiers, an Indian suit,
Raider’s tools, and gunner’s loot.
I mash my cigarette, and good night,
Turn off the angel and the light
On a single switch. The children toss
In excited sleep. Alone in the house,
I feel the old, confusing wind
Shake the dark tree and shake my mind,
Hearing tomorrow rattle and bang
Louder than all the angels sang.
By feel, I lower the thermostat
And pick my way through a creaking flat.
The demon children, the angel doll,
Sleep in two darks off one dark hall.
I move through darkness memorized,
Feeling for doors. One half-surprised
Wish stays lit inside my head.
I leave it on and go to bed.
1947
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS
PHYLLIS MCGINLEY
When little boys are able
To comprehend the flaws
In their December fable
And part with Santa Claus,
Although I do not think they grieve,
How burningly they disbelieve!
They cannot wait, they cannot rest
For knowledge nibbling at the breast.
They cannot rest, they cannot wait
To set conniving parents straight.
Branding that comrade as a dunce
Who trusts the Saint they trusted once,
With rude guffaw and facial spasm
They publish their iconoclasm,
And find particularly shocking
The thought of hanging up a stocking.
But little girls (no blinder
When faced by mortal fact)
Are cleverer and kinder
And brimming full of tact.
The knowingness of little girls
Is hidden underneath their curls.
Obligingly, since parents fancy
The season’s tinsel necromancy,
They take some pains to make pretense
Of duped and eager Innocence.
Agnostics born but Bernhardts bred,
They hang the stocking by the bed,
Listen for bells, and please their bette
By writing Kringle lengthy letters,
Only too well aware the fruit
Is shinier plunder, richer loot.
For little boys are rancorous
When robbed of any myth,
And spiteful and cantankerous
To all their kin and kith.
But little girls who draw conclusions
Make profit of their lost illusions.
1948
CHRISTMAS FAMILY REUNION
PETER DE VRIES
Since last the tutelary hearth
Has seen this bursting pod of kin,
I’ve thought how good the family mold,
How solid and how genuine.
Now once again the aunts are here,
The uncles, sisters, brothers,
With candy in the children’s hair,
The grownups in each other’s.
There’s talk of saving room for pie;
Grandma discusses her neuralgia.
I long for time to pass so I
Can think of all this with nostalgia.
1949
LANDSCAPE OF THE STAR
ADRIENNE RICH
The silence of the year. This hour the streets
Lie empty, and the clash of bells is scattered
Out to the edge of stars. I heard them tell
Morning’s first change and clang the people home
From crèche and scented aisle. Come home, come home,
I heard the bells of Christmas call and die.
This Christmas morning in the stony streets
Of an unaccustomed city, where the gas
Quivers against the darkly shuttered walls,
I walk, my breath a veil upon the cold,
No longer sick for home or hunted down
By faces loved, by gate or sill or tree
That once I used to wreathe in red and silver
Under the splintered incense of the fir.
I think of those inscrutables who toiled,
Heavy and brooding in their camel train,
Across the blue-wrapped stretches: home behind,
Kingdoms departed from, the solemn journey
Their only residence; the starlit hour,
The landscape of the star, their time and place.
O to be one of them, and feel the sway
Of rocking camel through the Judaean sand—
Ride, wrapped in swathes of damask and of silk,
Hear the faint ring of jewel in silver mesh
Starring the silence of the plain, and hold
With rigid fingers curved as in oblation
The golden jar of myrrh against the knees.
To ride thus, bearing gifts to a strange land,
To a strange king, nor think of fear and envy,
Being so bemused by starlight of one star,
The long unbroken journey, that all questions
Sink like the lesser lights behind the hills;
Think neither of the end in sight nor all
That lies behind, but dreamlessly to ride,
Traveller at one with travelled countryside.
How else, since for those Magi and their train
The palaces behind have ceased to be
Home, and the home they travel toward is still
But rumor stoking fear in Herod’s brain?
What else for them but this, since nevermore
Can courts and states receive them as they were,
Nor have the trampled earth, the roof of straw
Received the kings as they are yet to be?
The bells are silent, silenced in my mind
As on the dark. I walk, a foreigner,
Upon this night that calls all travellers home,
The prodigal forgiven, and the breach
Mended for this one feast. Yet all are strange
To their own ends, and their beginnings now
Cannot contain them. Once-familiar speech
Babbles in wayward dialect of a dream.
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,
&nbs
p; 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—