Author: Dale

From “The History of Christmas” by Deborah Hopkinson in A Joyful Christmas by James Ransome:

“Toys and bright tinsel, cookies and carols, sparkling lights and pine-scented trees. All these things make Christmas special. How did the celebration of the birth of one child so long ago come to include so many different traditions?

“People have celebrated the birth of Jesus on December 25 since the fourth century. But the Bible doesn’t tell us the exact date of his birth. Most historians don’t think Jesus was born in December at all, as it would have been too cold then for the shepherds to be keeping watch over their sheep at night.

“But it was natural for the early Christians to choose December 25 as the birthday of the Christ child. The Roman emperor Constantine became a Christian in the year 312. He decided to combine the celebration of the birth of the sun god, which the Romans celebrated on December 25, with the worship of Christ, who also brought light into the world….

“The winter solstice, marking the shortest day of the year, took place just a few days before December 25 and was already a time of celebration in Europe. Families came together at the end of the harvest season to feast, dance, and sing….

“These celebrations at the darkest time of the year brought light and hope that spring would come again soon….”

From “The Winter Heart” by Don Russ in An American Christmas, edited by Jane B. Hill:

When the autumn afternoons have blown away
and, lavender and blue and silver and gray

with sleep, a cold December’s evenings ease
toward night, we wait. When crystallizing trees

and hills have paled to vapor and the dreaming world
could vanish in a final breath of whorled

and frozen white, we hope. If what we know
of love is summer’s coming just to go,

we wait and hope and — trembling — hold a start
of embers in a deeper hollow of the winter heart.

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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.

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From “Christmas Carol” by Sara Teasdale in Vintage Christmas Traditions edited by Linda Davies:

The angels came from heaven high,
And they were clad with wings;
And lo, they brought a joyful song
The host of heaven sings.

The kings they knocked upon the door,
The wise men entered in,
The shepherds followed after them
To hear the song begin.

The angels sang through all the night
Until the rising sun,
But little Jesus fell asleep
Before the song was done.

From “Wild Holidays” in Gather Ye Wild Things: A Forager’s Year by Susan Tyler Hitchcock:

“Thank goodness for holidays to cheer us through the cold. And thank goodness for wild evergreens to ornament the way…. I come now, under a winter sun cold and shiny, gathering wild evergreens and gay red berries to decorate home for the holidays….

“Mountain laurel is my favorite Christmas evergreen. It can be gathered throughout the eastern mountain regions of this continent. Though harmful to farm animals that might happen upon it (and also to humans, were they to taste the unappetizing leaves), mountain laurel’s looks appeal. Its snarled, striated shrub-trunks open into bouquets of glossy evergreen…. You’ll know you’re in a mountain laurel thicket when you have to stoop to pass under overhanging boughs….

“These are magical places, shaped for elves and gnomes rather than for people.”

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From Old Christmas by Washington Irving:

“There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere beauties of nature…. The song of the bird, the murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence, all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation….

“But in the depth of winter… our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of each other’s society, and are brought more closely together by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness….”

From “Christmas Feeding Station” in Following their Star: Poems of Christmas and Nature  by Maxwell Corydon Wheat: 

bulbs of red, green, gold in the tree
tinsel, ribbons, a scarlet bow
The birds come anyway

white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches
black-capped chickadees, white-throated sparrows
song sparrows with dark dashes and “stickpin” gold finches,
house finches awash with red
evening grosbeaks, yellow with bold white patches
jays in brillance of clear sky after snowfall
cardinals in cassocks and crests of scarlet

The birds are their own decorations

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From “Ichod, The Ice Troll” by Santa Claus, in Santa’s Christmas Storybook by Sheila Black:

“Under Owl’s supervision, the work began. The sparrows flew to town and found spools of red and green thread with which to string the decorations. The squirrels gathered nuts and polished them with their little paws until they shone silver and gold.

“The raccoons picked red berries and pine cones and strung them into long, loopy chains. Meanwhile the cardinals and blue jays and other brightly colored birds found all the feathers they had lost and, using their nest-building skills, wove them into ornaments with their agile beaks. The deer and elk helped, too, fetching branches of holly from the forest meadows.

“One by one, the animals hung these decorations on the towering blue spruce. At last, the tree was ready. The animals gathered together to admire their handiwork.

“Their tree had no glass balls or lights like those on other Christmas trees, yet it was no less beautiful without them. From bottom to top, the great spruce glimmered with bright berries, tufts of feathers, colorful dried leaves and flowers, and gold and silver nuts. At the very tip top was a snow-white star made from wild swan feathers, and around the bottom Owl (who prided himself on being able to read and write) had carefully arranged holly branches to spell out the words:

“Merry Christmas!”

From “A Holly Day” in Christmas is Coming! Poems  by Charles Ghigna and Debra Ghigna:

A holly tree,
A holly berry,
A holiday,
And we are merry.

A star above
To wish upon,
A winter’s eve,
A snowy dawn.

All red and green
Along the way,
A holly time,
A Christmas day.

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