Dear Readers ... Here is my 2011 Christmas poem. (A few notes follow, below the text.)
Beat Frequency (Christmas in October)
Backward through the calendar
Christmas yearly strides.
Pagans push it earlier;
Summerward it rides.
Every year it starts again,
Sooner than before.
Someday we shall wake in June,
With Christmas at the door.
Still, they won't be satisfied,
These hurriers to carouse,
Until electric bulbs are hung
From April's budding boughs.
Faster! Sooner! still they cry.
On the madness goes!
Heathen frenzy at the malls,
'Mid February's snows.
Why this dash to Bethlehem?
Why no fear of danger?
Rush on pagan, meet your Lord,
Lying in the manger.
Finally, they shall catch me up;
We'll celebrate in synch.
And they shall have their Christmas Eve
Upon Epiphany's brink.
This beating of the Christmas waves,
For aeons shall it live.
For pagans need more Christmases
Than Christendom can give.
© 2011, Paul Erlandson
Notes:
1. By "pagan" here I merely mean "non-Christian".
2. It is, of course, not entirely the fault of pagans that Christmas is celebrated at the "wrong" time. Greedy capitalists, unprincipled radio station managers, and Christians who have lost their way from the Church Calendar (celebrating neither Advent nor the 12 Days of Christmas) are also to blame.
3. I had the idea for this poem back in October, 2011, a few days before Halloween, when I heard Christmas music being played on the radio.
