From “The Christmas Tree” by C. Day Lewis in A Single Star: An Anthology of Christmas Poetry compiled by David Davis:
Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons — the same
That yesterday hid in the spinney and had no fame
Till we put out the lights now….
So feast your eyes now
On mimic star and moon-cold bauble:
Worlds may wither unseen,
But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,
A phoenix in evergreen….
From Christmas in the Good Old Days: A Victorian Album by Daniel J. Foley:
“When the December issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book appeared in 1850, that old German custom, the Christmas tree, became a conversation piece all across America. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor, had ‘borrowed’ a picture from The Illustrated London News and entitled it ‘The Christmas tree — a new American custom.’ In the years that followed, churches and homes were decorated lavishly with colorful trees and greens of every description, accentuated with red berries, cones, and dried seed pods. ‘Bringing home Christmas’ meant gathering greens with all the family participating. Charles Dickens, with his ‘Christmas Carol‘ and other holiday stories, had been largely responsible for the revival of this feast of the heart and the home….
“At a time when tinsel, glitter, and baubles were unknown, laurel leaves, sprigs of pine, cedar and hemlock, bittersweet berries, trailing stems of ground pine, ferns, thistle heads, clematis plumes and other wildings were used to make elaborate patterns and tracery around doorways, on mantles, dadoes, and window frames, and wherever space was available for adornment.”
From “Christmas Tree” by Laurence Smith in The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems edited by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark:
Star over all
Eye of the night
Stand on my tree
Magical sight
Green under frost
Green under snow
Green under tinsel
Glitter and glow
Appled with baubles
Silver and gold
Spangled with fire
Warm over cold.
