It might be thought a cop out to make most of my editorial a poem: but the one that follows is made for January. It is (nearly) the last verses of a poem that is 35 Pages long, from W H Auden’s “A Christmas Oratorio.” It is a poem full of deep insights about the Christmas story and why it resonates throughout the ages. The last bit has the added advantage of being comprehensible!
The last stanzas turn to what follows……
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —
Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened.
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
That last line “Everything became a You and nothing was an It” is a brilliant summary at least to me of the Christmas story – because it is a story that takes you from the generality, humankind, politics, all the theories – to a particular moment and particular baby, whose meaning was and is love, God’s love; and if we really visit that stable, things we think of, perhaps for safety, in the third person (he/she/it/them/they), become a You – and a me. Not someone’s else job to love, but yours and mine. No wonder the Christian faith is said to be challenging – but also life-giving.
Peter