Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Index: Christmas Readings

 


Tim Anderson | Ivory in the Desert
Tim Anderson | Loneliness Can Be Contagious

Connie Braun | A Christmas Gift from the Sea

Frederick Buechner | The Annunciation
Frederick Buechner | Emmanuel
Frederick Buechner | The Face in the Sky
Frederick Buechner | Gabriel

Robert Farrar Capon | Advent
Robert Farrar Capon | Better Watch Out
Robert Farrar Capon | Naughty or Nice

Truman Capote | A Christmas Memory

Tom Carson | Snow Angel

Nicola Colhoun | Creche

John F. Deane | Driving To Midnight Mass in Dublin on Christmas Eve

Annie Dillard | Feast Days
Annie Dillard | God in the Doorway

Dina Donohue | No Room

Craig Erickson | Christmas Rant

John Henry Faulk | A Child's Christmas in Texas

Lawrence Ferlinghetti | Christ Climbed Down

Paul Flucke | The Secret of the Gifts

Steven Garber | Always Winter, Never Christmas

Rev. J.M. Gates | Death Might Be Your Santa Claus

William Gibson | Butterfingers Angel

Lorenz Graham | Every Man Heart Lay Down

Wayne Harrel | The Camels of Ancient Yore

Rory Holland | Frail Humanity
Rory Holland | Nativity

Garrison Keillor | The Seven Principles of a Successful Christmas

Ron Klug | Joseph's Lullaby

David Kossoff | Seth
David Kossoff | Shem

Rudi Krause | one way
Rudi Krause | unforeseen

Madeleine L'Engle | O Sapientia
Madeleine L'Engle | The Tree

Peter La Grand | Christmas Memory

Mike Mason | Three Fools

mehgyver | thanks everyone

William Nicholoson | Christmas Drinks Party

Lance Odegard | Impossible Dream

Richard Osler | Advent Poems 2006
Richard Osler | Afterwards

Karl Petersen | Joseph's Night Watch

Ron Reed | Clay
Ron Reed | It's a Wonderful Life

Sheila Rosen | No Safe Place

Mike Royko | Pretty Well Picked Over

Luci Shaw | Advent III
Luci Shaw | December
Luci Shaw | Madonna and Child, with Saints
Luci Shaw | Mary Considers Her Situation
Luci Shaw | Presents

Sufjan Stevens | Christmas Tube Socks

Richard Tillinghast | One Night in Galilee

Diane Tucker | Advent Couplets
Diane Tucker | Christmas Couplets

Various Authors | Joseph & Mary

Richard Waller | Engineer's Christmas


karl petersen | joseph's night watch

She looks at me, pale and ghostly, 
even though she stands full in evening light 
outside my shop door. My hammer drops
to the ground, she fills me with such terror: 
the innocent delight of her eyes gone, 
those gentle hands which she could hold 
the world in wring and twist
over her stomach in the folds of her dress, 
and the delicately proud line of her body—
where has it gone, stooped as if spent 
from a sickness? 

Her eyes drift to the ground 
where earth-shaking news takes shape 
in the carpet of splintered wood and nails.

Mary?

Please listen and hear me out, her voice 
that has so many times quickened my heart
with the lightness of a star, so heavy now.

Mary, what—


She takes my hand, draws me closer
and places my callused palm 
over a bulge in her stomach.

Is it—

You must believe what

How did this—  


I need to say… 
then do what you will. 

My face flushes to feel this growing 
in her. I try to sit, and stumble 
against a pile of boards that fall
in a clattering heap, 
repeating the shattering announcement 
down the streets, through the open windows 
and doors of the torpid town; women and 
children passing by glance in bewilderment, 
Reuben the blacksmith stops his clanging 
three doors down. 
I beg her to come inside,  
my throat tight, so dry I cannot speak. 
I try to think, to bring substance 
to the dizzying rush
of incomprehension in my skull.

Your trip south, was it then? I ask,

 That you met… that it happened?


I haven’t slept with anyone.

Just tell me who.

             It wasn’t that way.
            An angel came to me—

An angel!  

            Joseph…

Go! Get out!


That night in bed I stare into the dark,
do not sleep, her voice that was not her own, 
her words haunting me, my Mary, 
visions of her betrayal mocking me:
strange hands in her dark, velvet hair,
her skin tender against his, 
her warm breath 
on his face, lips, limbs merging—
Was it awkward, timid?
or yearning and confident? 
I try to cry but cannot,
the wound too deep, and burning,
twisting, knotting.

Lord why do you punish me? 
With pains of oath I pledged myself 
to purity until our wedding day, for you.

For her. If this is how she thanks my decency,
let me be the first to throw a stone
on the day of her execution!

 

Darkness like the devil himself 

encroaches and taunts me: 
You thought you had her, he sneers,
but look now how God takes her away.

Yes, I relent, 
the Lord giveth and the Lord—
But what have I done? 
What have I not done? 
Does she find me lacking? 

I ponder how to end it, and dozing off 
I drift over the Galilean terrain
looking for a place to escape: 
a crevice in the rocks among 
the insane, or lepers, where I can die, 
inconspicuous and nameless, 
a rocky cliff at the edge of town where
I look over and cannot see to the bottom.
And there as a vision in the sky
is Mary, her face pained and beckoning. 
And I let myself go, and fall free.

I start awake, shaking cold in my sweat,
my breathing rapid, my chest pounding, 
head wanting to burst. I need 
some place to run.

A sheep bleats in the cold night,
as clear and definite as my own voice,
and my body slackens. I listen,
but there is no answer to this sheep’s cry 
and I am sure that it feels my fear;
it bleats again over the town, and again. 
And, of its own, a grief locked inside me 
that seems to contain all the sorrow of Israel
lets go in sudden, violent gushes. And
in my tears is Mary and the memory 
of my hand on the child in her womb.
In the expanse of night comes a plan: 
break the engagement, 
hide her in a village 
far from Nazareth where
the gossiping jackals cannot find her, 
far from the gawking eyes, 
until she has given birth.
I’ll tell them she’s gone south again 
to be with her cousin, Elizabeth. 
She can give the child away, 
to whoever wants it, 
as the Lord wills.

I go outside for some night air,
to empty my bladder, and
between wakefulness and sleep, 
stupefied and contemplating 
the limpid hope of my descendents in my hand,
I drop back against the wall of my empty house 
and stare into the stars pregnant with 
the promised generations of our father Abraham.
And a face of a man as aged as Israel
forms there among the constellations, 
and with a voice as timeless as Yahweh himself: 

Joseph, son of David.

Yes, Lord, I am here, the heir of my father David.
Do you bring the sins of my ancestors on me
that you have wounded me this way?
Lord, forgive me, but spare me this, I pray:
to have Mary as my wife, that is all,
to live out the end of my days in Nazareth, 
a carpenter, my only ambition.
Is it too much? 

You will never be a king, Joseph,
as your father David, but you will raise one.

I could more easily raise an elephant,
for now I have no reason even to raise 
what lies here between my legs, 
because you have taken away
the passion of my heart!

She will be yours in time in body and soul and mind.
It is as Mary says. No man has slept with her.
This is my doing.

But how—


So be glad. Marry her 
and take her in to live with you.

A breeze brushes my face
and I shiver. The stars are fading, 
displaced by a growing glow of light 
that signals dawn, rising on a far hill 
like a lion with a great, shimmering mane  
approaching a vast plain plotted
with small tufts of dirty-white sheep,
but the bleating of the night hours
has stopped, as if in wait.

luci shaw | mary's sword

 


Yes, and a sword will also pierce your own heart...
Luke 2:35

On the fortieth day, the little family waits 
in the temple for old Simeon to bless the new Baby.
His declaration is one of promise and divine import 
for the human race: our rising. Our decline.
And then, quite shockingly, he turns to Mary, 
the young mother with prophetic words: 
Also, a sword will pierce your own heart.” 
Does she suck in her breath at the violent word? 
And did the thrust of foreboding haunt her, living as 
she did, on the fringes of her Son’s too-brief life?
We’d hope that her own pain eased as she watched
her Son’s healing miracles. When others leaped up,
restored by his creative touch, perhaps she sensed
her own heart’s flesh knit, its raw edges scarring over. 

But we guess that Mary lived the weapon’s threat 
for all those years until its deepest wound, 
there at her Son’s harsh dying,
when a sharp spear-thrust in his own side assured her, 
and each of us, a healing, and a resurrected life.

mehgyver | thanks everyone

Well, I just had a baby....

in a barn.

So, thanks everyone who brought gifts.
The gold, the perfumes.
All things babies love.

Also the child who inexplicably played drums,
like, right in my face.

This...
This was great.

heids macdonald | there's room

There’s room.

Honestly.
There’s room.
There’s room
for the uncle
that loves the gawdy decorations
and the kids running cut-out paper snowflakes along every banister, 
and the teenager who is embarrassed to admit they still want to decorate the tree.
So, the cool aunt with the buzz-cut
whose wife is just as cool 
inviting them to help out
is just the ticket.
There’s room for deep inhales and longer exhales, 
because the spicy smell of apple pie in the oven reminds you
of mom. 
And that is wonderful
and lonely
and triggering.
Because mom was complicated. And there’s room for that. Honestly. 
There’s room.
There’s room
for Hanukkah candles burning in window sills
and for the cookie platter
supplied to the shift workers for whom Christmas day
is just another shift.
There’s room
For family – all sorts.
For re-uniting family:
perhaps dysfunctional but trying.
For found family:
perhaps that crew of queers who can’t go home anymore. So, they say to each other,
“There is still pumpkin pie on the menu!”
For grieving family:
Perhaps rotating cigarette breaks on the steps to the hospital, when the walls of the palliative room are closing in.
And there’s room for the words,
“I hate Christmas,”
because why does everyone die in December?
There’s room.
Honestly.
There’s room.
There’s room
for putting up the tree
the day after Halloween and leaving it
till spring. 
There’s room
in the Christmas eve service
for everyone.
So church, remember that.
And there’s room
for the person that can’t darken a pew.
Afterall,
The Christ child grew into person
who had a thing or two to say about
the religious establishment’s treatment
of “the least of these.”
There’s room
for loneliness.
You are not alone in this.
There’s room
to forgive
and for not knowing how to yet.
There’s room
for the same stories told over and over:
of babes and misers and angels and red-nosed reindeer, and prophetic stars and lassoing the moon,
and poor, ordinary, occupied people...
waiting.
There’s room for mulled wine and chocolate and
Those caramel covered marshmallow things. 
HONESTLY! THERE’S ROOM! 
There’s room
at the table for the ones who never seem to fit. Maybe that’s you.
In which case,
there’s room for you – 
along with the shepherds and stargazers
and unwed pregnant teenagers and dreamy carpenters and livestock:
all welcome when
there was no room
at the inn.
Because gathered round love
(humble and asking for nothing)
There’s room for you.
Honestly.
There’s room. 

*

please do not publish, perform or distribute without permission from the author:
heids macdonald : heidsmacdonald@gmail.com

richard waller | an engineer's christmas

 I. No known species of reindeer can fly. However, there are some 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer (which only Santa has ever seen). 


II. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa apparently does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. 

III. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time  zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.  Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per  household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops  or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second —  3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. 

IV. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two  pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them --- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This
increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 

V. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,000 pounds of force. 

VI. In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents to all the good children on Christmas Eve, HE'S DEAD NOW. 

richard tillinghast | one night in galilee

 We were looking to bed down for the night,

get the flock together safe and the dogs
keeping watch. Rain had started to fall.

Then the sky blazed
and we heard music--
commanding and lofty
but warm-hearted and human too.
It reached out and
found us where we lay.

Fear not, a voice said.
And out of the voice merged a figure.
He looked like a man
but we knew he wasn't.

How could we welcome such a one?
Offer him goats' milk to drink?
Find place for him in our tent,
smelling as it did of tallow and long days
handling animals,
on the move for months?

Before we could make up our minds
the air came alive with angels' wings--
air that a moment before had been
heavy with mud-mist and sheep funk.
The sound of their wings
was a river at floodtide.
Their plumage dazzled our eyes,
this choir half glimpsed
singing their message
of peace on earth,
a royal family in a stable,
a baby who was a king.

And when they had gone away
into heaven,
we looked at each other dumbstruck.
It was night again,
the dogs hung close and kept quiet.
Then someone said, Let us go and see.

bill bunn | away from the manger

One Christmas, Linda bought the kids a plastic manger scene. She wanted the children to interact with the figures, play with the players, major and minor. I agreed with her. There's no better way to get into a story than being able to interact with it in some physical way. Here were all the season's big stars – the baby Christ, the angels, the shepherds, Joseph, Mary and the barnyard cast – built from durable, kid-friendly plastic.

At the beginning of December, when we decorated the house for Christmas, we set up the new manger scene. But we had forgotten about the democracy of toys. In this republic, all toys – regardless of symbolic value – are created equal. And any toy may interact with any other, depending only on the elasticity of the operator’s imagination.

Understandably, Christ and cast were popular. Everyone seemed to want him around. Christ would not stay put.

 

The baby Jesus ended up visiting with our Lego populace. He frequented the company of stuffed animals, despite the immense difference in scale. Another time, I found Jesus stuffed into the chimney of a dollhouse. He was helping his brother, Santa, the kids explained. I found him driving the Barbie Corvette with Barbie, down at the end of the hall.

 

The rest of the cast took their cue from the baby. I saw a wise man and the donkey, helping a farmer drive a tractor in a castle. I found Mary and another wise man helping a set of Lego firemen rescue animals and medieval soldiers from a train wreck. It was as if the manger was only a pose, like a picture taken at a party that the stable cast would strike for a moment, a starting point from which they would begin.

Then, Jesus lost his head. One of our children or one of his or her friends had broken the head off the plastic Jesus. He was a toy, and the heads of toys are often removable. A child had tried removing it but ended up breaking it.

 

In our hearts we were deeply disturbed. It was okay for Barbie to lose her head, or Ken to lose his, but not the Christ child. Who would do such a thing? Why not one of the shepherds? Why not Joseph? But the body was found headless, the plastic neck snapped.

 

We searched for the head in the big Lego tub. In the toy boxes in people's rooms. In drawers and under beds. No head.

 

Who had beheaded the Christ child? This was a deliberate act. So began our crusade.

 

"Who took Jesus' head?" we asked, and we heard silence. We asked the question in many different ways: calmly, urgently, sadly, happily, indifferently and with deep concern. Nothing. Or rather, everything.

 

Elise thought she saw it in various places throughout the house 

(that made us suspect her). 

May insisted she hadn’t done anything 

(which made us suspect her). 

Ezra got tired of us asking the question and confessed 

(which made us conclude it was him), 

but then his story wouldn’t hold 

(which made us suspect him). 

 

Each one carried shades of unshakable guilt. Linda and I, too, felt pangs of guilt. Maybe they hadn’t broken it. Maybe they were all telling the truth. The inquisition ended in failure.

 

We phoned the manufacturers and asked them to ship a new Jesus. They could make no guarantees, but we hoped that his arrival might happen before Christmas. 

In the meantime, the headless Jesus was too much to look at, so my wife crazy-glued the head of a Lego person on his shoulders. The sunglassed eyes of the Lego head looked far too smug to sit on Christ's shoulders, and the head would accept different hats or helmets, all of which seemed blasphemous, but it was much better than a headless baby.

 

Many years earlier, Linda and I had travelled to Rome, to the Sistine Chapel, to see Michelangelo’s frescoes. I remember staring up at the roof, considering, with the rest of the mob, the space between God’s and Adam’s hands. What could that gap mean? What was Michelangelo’s thought? I think it was a practical consideration. If the two hands had touched, things would have become weird – Michelangelo’s deity might not have stayed put.

 

The new Jesus arrived in a small box a few days before Christmas. Was this the Advent or the Second Coming? Once out of the packaging, he was more popular than ever. Despite our sternest warnings, he consorted regularly with all toys, regardless of their shape and size, regardless of where they were made. He obviously wasn’t going to stay in the manger, though the picture on the box suggested this might happen.

 

It's time to set up our nativity scene again. I arrange the figurines on the coffee table, according to the picture on the box. As I lay Christ into his moulded manger, I realize he won't be here long. Within minutes, the last place I'll find him is in the manger. For in our house, God can be touched, so there's no telling where he might end up.

 

david waltner-toews | if he were born today: christmas 1974

 winter night in palestine

clean and cold as polished steel

 

arabs rest their sheep

among rocks and thistles

like a patch of scruffy spring snow

on the hillside

 

somewhere behind them

in a desert cave

a small fire holds the vengeant night

at bay

men and women commune with clammy handshakes

and guns: the bread of death

 

below the shepherds

Israeli soldiers patrol the occupied city

stop to fidget at a small bar--

a sign at the city gate reads:

all arabs must register 

with the military authorities

in the city of their birth

 

the shepherds, remembering the sign

joke about it;

they were born in tents

they do not leave their sheep

 

suddenly a rocket

sleek as a sacrificial blade

splits the belly of silence above them

exploding, shrieking into the streets below;

the streets answer with gunfire rattle

boots running on concrete

trucks

searchlights against the hills

 

the shepherds huddle behind a rock

their sheep are bleating, bleating

 

more rattle of guns

the bleating stops

 

lights out, motors choke into silence

boots stomp back to the bar

nervous laughter curls up like smoke

incense to the unspeaking

mask of night

 

down a cobbled alley

from the bar

in a small lean-to

anxious, calloused hands

are pushing some goats away

from their manger

nearby, on a bed of dirty straw

a palestinian woman groans

pushing with all her prayerful might

against the pain in her belly