Fresh off the back of these hugely cynical could-be-christmas cards by Mister Bob Brian, I thought I’d do another really joyful post to end the year with!
My new favourite wordsmith is the poet Wendy Cope. One of her most beautiful pieces of work is this, in my opinion, which I first read on a tube card panel. If you don’t know her work already, I implore you to look it up!
She has also written two really rather wonderful poems about Christmas.
If you’re someone who loves Christmas, you might want to look away now.
If on the other hand, you’re someone who has a somewhat dysfunctional family unit, you might appreciate the dark sentiment behind this one.
I personally think it’s a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Either way, merry Christmas one and all!
A Christmas Song
Why is the baby crying
On this, his special day,
When we have brought him lovely gifts
And laid them on the hay?
He’s crying for the people
Who greet this day with dread
Because somebody dear to them
Is far away or dead,
For all the men and women
Whose love affairs went wrong,
Who try their best at merriment
When Christmas comes along
For separated parents
Whose turn it is to grieve
While children hang their stockings up
Elsewhere on Christmas Eve,
For everyone whose burden,
Carried throughout the year,
Is heavier at Christmastime,
The season of good cheer.
That’s why the baby’s crying
There in the cattle stall:
He’s crying for those people.
He’s crying for them all.
Like I said, it’s not the chirpiest!
Next up, there’s this UTTER GEM.
I’m not – but it made me laugh out loud. So true!
A Christmas Poem
At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle,
The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle
And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle
And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you’re single.
By Wendy Cope
LORELEI MATHIAS 