Christmas Bookends

Two poems I like to think of as Christmas bookends:

Thomas Hardy's, The Oxen,

and

T.S.Eliot's, A cold coming we had of it.

Why bookends is a little obvious I'm afraid - The Oxen is set on Christmas Eve - or rather, the moment BC turned to AD (to steal from U.A. Fanthorpe) - and the ‘Cold Coming’ is the Epiphany (12th Night, the time when 'Members of an obscure Persian sect' - Fanthorpe again - 'walked into history').

Both have become, like Holly, Christmas Evergreens associated in the minds of my generation of English Teacher - and consequently countless students - with the Christmas Carol Service - (which we still called it back then) - and regular recitations tucked somewhere between 'Away in a Manger' and 'We Three Kings'.

If you had a good, younger student, the Hardy could be given a lovely simpering twist; Eliot needed a teacher to deliver it well - bit of a grumpy ex-PE, now Geography teacher - or a slightly fading girl's heartthrob English staff junior member!

And therein lies the tragedy.

Both poems get stuck on the shelf for the rest of the year (dusted off sometimes for examination) to await another Resurection as a quick fix of emotion amongst the Plastic Glitter, Bugger-the-fire-regulations Candles and Coca-Cola Santas.

Both poems though, like Holly, have a bit more 'history' - and spikes which raise blood.

The first thing I notice, and which I think is frequently ignored, is the ‘quote’ at the start.

“Now they’re on their knees” – an elder said. When was it said? – When we were children.

As children we see the world in a hopeful way – optimistically.

It is a pastoral view – gentle shepherds, gentle oxen.

Good will out.

“ . . . meek mild creatures . . .” make up our world – and nature is dominant.

Hardy is remembering innocence.

It was beautiful; it was honourable: It is dead.

It is, ‘so fair a fancy’ – that few would now weave it. Only a fancy.

It is a time, “childhood used to know”.

In the Eliot, they had a cold coming.

He is quoting doubly – Launcelot Andrews and the old, near to death, Magi.

His memories are not so pleasant, but they are as ideal.

Like the child in Hardy, there is a yearning for that birth – for the glory and beauty of new life.

The reality though is “Hard and bitter agony”.

There is a suggestion of disillusionment.

But it is only a suggestion – there is tremendous hope.

It is the hope of the child, still in the man – “If someone said . . . I should go with him . . .hoping it might be so.”

For Eliot, “All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again.”

Once again, that core stone of hope, the ‘no regrets’ of the old man that is in both poems.

What chance I wonder have children of ever understanding these poems?

‘Birth or Death?’