Christmas

Tinsel and trees and parties and glitter

Inches round waists, “Gosh, we’ll have to get fitter.”

Fruit cakes and presents and fancy balloons

Stuffy old churches with hackneyed old tunes.

Kids writing lists, bearing hope for the night,

Their fathers home drunk, all prepared for a fight.

Thick coats, scarves and gloves, getting ready for wassailing

A crammed tube to Hamleys, lots of elbows and jostling.

An angel appeared to a virgin – a beauty

In a land full of soldiers mean and hardened with duty

“Good news to all men, and peace upon earth!”

But bad news from Herod for those just given birth.

So God became man whilst eternity sung

to the child in the trough, ‘midst the earth and the dung.

The message that came was that God would draw near

to men lost in their darkness, their anguish and fear

And the hopeless despair thickly veiled in their breast

was banished forever where the star came to rest.

  © Irvin Skrzypiec-allen