From “The Magic Show” by Vernon Scannell in The Puffin Book of Christmas Poems, compiled by Wes Magee:
After a feast of sausage-rolls,
Sandwiches of various meats,
Jewelled jellies, brimming bowls
Of chocolate ice and other treats,
We children played at Blind Man’s Buff,
Hide and Seek, Pin-the-tail-on-Ned,
And then — when we’d had just enough
Of party-games — we all were led
Into another room to see
The Magic Show. The wizard held
A wand of polished ebony.
His white-gloved, flickering hands compelled
The rapt attention of us all.
He conjured from astonished air
A living pigeon and a fall
Of paper snowflakes; made us stare
Bewildered as a playing card —
Unlike a leopard — changed its spots
And disappeared. He placed some starred
And satin scarves in silver pots,
Withdrew them as plain bits of rag.
Then swallowed them before our eyes.
But soon we felt attention flag
And found delighted, first surprise
Had withered like a wintry leaf;
And, when the tricks were over, we
Applauded, yet felt some relief,
And left the party willingly.
‘Goodnight,’ we said, ‘and thank you for
The lovely time we’ve had.’ Outside,
The freezing night was still. We saw
Above our heads the slow clouds stride
Across the vast unswallowable skies;
White, graceful gestures of the moon,
The stars’ intent and glittering eyes.
And, gleaming like a silver spoon,
The frosty path to lead us home.
Our breath hung blossoms on unseen
Boughs of air as we paused there,
And we forgot that we had been
Pleased briefly by that conjuror,
Could not recall his tricks, or face,
Bewitched and awed, as now we were,
By magic of the common place.
Here we go again!
Once upon a time, in the winter of 2019, I started a “Days to Christmas” project to experiment with photography, camera settings, and lighting techniques using various holiday figurines, baubles, and trinquettes as my photo subjects. It somehow (?!?) became a tradition, so once again, for 2025, here we have the first post in this year’s series.
Working indoors with interior and artificial lighting is a lot different than most of my photography, which is of course outdoors in natural light. While this whole project can seem a bit effortful at times, every year it teaches me something new, especially about how to manage light when — unlike outdoor natural light — you can manipulate its characteristics yourself. When photographing Christmas subjects, we tend to emulate how we visualize the season: contrasts between colors like red and green, bright lights against dark backgrounds, or explosions of colors and textures like those of a Christmas tree. During the first couple of years of this project, I typically took photos as night fell to capture those effects; with practice I’ve learned to manage lighting so that I can take photos during the day and simulate what we might see when the sun goes down. The photos in this post, for example, were all taken around mid-day yesterday, yet I (hope) I’ve managed to evoke the Christmas metaphor of warm lights opposing the darkness of winter — one of this season’s intuitively understood visual themes.
The poem I selected for this year’s first post reflects similar visual scenes, as its characters move from the frenetic opening lines to end up in the quieter “magic of the common place” — something that echoes the seasonal transition from chaotic first days to Christmas Day itself. Finding poems that resonate with the work I do for this series is as much fun as the photography itself, and there will be at least one such poem (and some prose) for all of the posts.
If you’d like to see any of the projects from previous years, here they are:
Days to Christmas 2024
Days to Christmas 2023
Days to Christmas 2022
Days to Christmas 2021
Days to Christmas 2020
Days to Christmas 2019
Ho! Ho! Ho!
