The best words for Christmas are from T.S. Eliot’s marvelous poem, “The journey of the Magi.” They are not words particularly full of merriment or traditional good cheer or festive laughter. You should read the whole poem, but here are some opening lines:
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter………..
Then the camel-men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears saying
That this was folly.”
This poem reminds us that in the beginning Christmas was very much more about faith than it was about festivity – a hard journey, not just a happing outing. And the men who made that first journey to attend the poor village birth were tempted by frivolity:
“There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet”
And yet in the end it was not such easy joys that they discovered and which haunted them forever that first Christmas day. It is a beautiful poem.
