If they cancelled Christmas

 

Christmas means something to everyone

Not to say it’s all tinsel and fun,

Some might prefer if it was gone,

For them, not a happy season.

 

Christmas, ostensibly, a Christian holy day:

Jesus, as they like to say,

Is the reason

For the Season.

 

His birth, the Nativity, is what it’s all about

The narrative of what came about

Recounted, reenacted, year in and year out.

We love to tell the story (or is it stories?)

 

Of Mary and her fiancé, Joe and the little donkey, in tow.

Going down to crowded Bethlehem, the stable, the manger,

The angels, shepherds and three kings.

Who cares if it didn’t actually happen in quite the same way.

 

The songs we sing to tell the stories are widely known and sung.

Caroling in the high streets and on the market square,

Also in schools, churches and cathedrals, in fact anywhere.

There are famous carols in many a different tongue.

 

Then there are the meta-Christmas doings,

Cards and presents and Christmas trees,

Decorations and multicoloured LED’s

Turkeys, puddings, mulled wine and mince pies

Gingerbread houses, crackers! What’s the prize?

 

And who could forget Old Saint Nick?

We love pantos, and plays and a good Christmas flick.

Dicken’s Christmas Carol with Scrooge and Tiny Tim,

The Nutcracker Ballet and Midnight Express

 

I’m sure every reader could add things

Of which I’m not aware, or about which I forgot.

But what if for some reason all of it was gone

Christmas banned and prohibited – how’d we cope.

 

How would this change us if every vestige was eliminated?

I imagine and believe that people for whom the belief is real,

Though the paraphernalia might have been taken away,

But the core belief will remain unmoved.

 

My question I believe reaches beyond the merely hypothetical

Conjecture and speaks to our ability to empathise

With people in desperate straights, like people in war situations

Find things that mean a lot are taken away.

 

Sometimes it’s not prohibition but life’s realities

Mean Christmas cannot happen in the same way.

So as we celebrate this festivity, let’s spare a thought and perhaps a prayer

For people finding it tough at this time of year.