To commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ this year, I found this nice little poem by Cristina Georgina Rossetti entitled “A Christmas Carol”:

In the bleak of mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a manger of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air;
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him.
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part—
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

May we remember, amid the wrapping and ribbon this year, to give the Lord the only gift that is really ours to give, a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

As we wend our way in the sometimes dreary world, may we all find hope in the commemoration of the birth of the Christ.

On this Christmas Eve, I quote from J. R. R. Tolkien’s marvelous essay on Faerie Stories:

...I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe.

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.

I have posted this previously elsewhere, but seeing as it is Christmas once again, and I have this new blog, I thought I would post it anew.

The ancient Scandinavians envisioned the Universe as a giant ash tree they called Yggdrasil or Mimameidr, the World Tree. Yggdrasil was described in the poems of the Poetic Edda¹ as “ever-green” (Voluspá² 19).

A few years ago, I stepped back from our just-decorated Christmas tree to admire it in the dimly-lit room and suddenly this Scandinavian universe-as-tree imagery came pouring into my mind.