Tag: closeup photography

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.

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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.”

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

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

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---