Merry Christmas 2007
Saint Nicholas
Medieval Fresco
(Image from Wikipedia)
Another Christmas has arrived for the Gypsy Scholar family, but merely one day for Christmas is so little time for celebration that I have to lament that fact. I'm especially haunted by that familiar song The Twelve Days of Christmas, which I loved when I was a child and which plays over and over in my head reminding me that the Medieval world thought of Christmas as a longer period than just one day.
Or is it the Catholic Church that treats Christmas as longer than a mere 24 hours?
Anyway, I've written a little rhyme of lament, partly as a 'present' for my wife Sun-Ae, who requested a poem, perhaps imagining one like what I gave her last year, but she's stuck with this whinging one this Christmas...
Appearances to the contrary, I'm very happy to greet this Christmas morning, so I'd better join the family at the tree.A year brings now another Christmas nigh,Christmas Present
And were there still those twelve medieval days
To celebrate a dozen, courtly ways,
I'd greet this time without protesting sigh.
For hardly greeted is it fast foreby
And lost within that sempiternal maze,
Forever hidden from our baffled gaze,
Where every single Christmas past will lie.
And yet, one dozen Christmases to fete
Would soon be just as all forever gone
Into that same dark labyrinth of time.
Such is of every Christmas past the fate
Predictable: it ought to prompt a yawn,
But since I muse, this Christmas Present rhyme.
But I leave all of my readers with best wishes for a very merry Christmas.
Labels: Christmas, Saint Nicholas
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 6:16 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Merry Christmas! =D
JLJ, I couldn't at first decipher that "equals D" stuff. My 'rhyme' earned a "D"? But I think that I figured out that you were . . . laughing?
Perhaps you were laughing while assigning me a "D"?
Whicheverway, thanks for the Merry Christmas wishes.
Jeffery Hodges
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Merry Christmas! :F
(Possible ways of deciphering this one: you get an F for Christmas -OR- I stuck my tongue out but it got frozen fast to a flagpole and I ripped off the lower half trying to free myself.)
Charles, either or . . . or both. Whicheverway, thanks for the Christmas spirit!
Jeffery Hodges
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Merry Christmas to you and your family, Jeffery! Thanks for another year of quirky, intelligent, and thought-provoking reading.
Thanks, Jeff. I especially appreciate your appreciation of my writing's quirkiness, the prime characteristic of my blogging...
Thanks, too (of course), for the season's greetings.
Jeffery Hodges
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Although not formally, most extend the spirit Christmas either before or after. Some put the tree up at thanksgiving and dismantle the day after; others leave the tree up until it falls apart. This along with other traditions that suit each family. I gather that in spirit your Christmas will be 12 days.
Even though the day is probably almost over, for you and your family, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.
Thanks, Hathor.
I wish that the season really were 12 days, but today (12/26), I've got to return to the university and post my students' grades, which will bring a flurry of activity in its wake as students contact me to plead for grade changes.
Still, I'll try to maintain some Christmas spirit and extend the same to you: Merry Christmas!
Jeffery Hodges
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A (belated) merry Christmas to you.
And to you, Deogolwulf.
Jeffery Hodges
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