Featured Poem: Festive Selection

The Christmas season is fast approaching, with just under a week to go to the big day (festive lunches and parties are already getting many of us into the mood...). To celebrate, we're doing something a little different with the Featured Poem. Everybody loves a selection box at Christmas; they offer something for every taste and can be dipped into whenever you fancy. So to be suitably seasonal, we're offering up the first of two poetry 'selection boxes' - an equivalent that's just as satisying and with no high calorie content, so it's all the sweeter. Not one poem, but ten - just call it an early Christmas present from us at The Reader Organisation to you.

The first selection is thoroughly and unashamedly all about Christmas itself, with plenty of treats to choose from. Enjoy.

Christmas Fancies – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A lovely poem that signals how the joy of Christmas can overpower the grey gloom of winter and other everyday troubles – is there any happier sound than the Christmas bells ‘pelting the air with silver chimes?’

Ceremonies For Christmas – Robert Herrick

We all have a number of ‘ceremonies’ to perform at this time of year, many of them involving food in abundance. And this poem contains meat, mince pies, plums and beer…(it’ll either make your mouth water or serve as a shopping list)

Voices In The Mist – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Something of an eerie scenario is set in the still, silent and misty night before Christmas – but happily, Christmas spirit is not absent.

A Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior – Ben Jonson

No Christmas would be complete without a Nativity scene and this is a particularly eloquent portrayal. “Can Man forget this story?” Jonson asks. We can’t possibly argue.

The Burning Babe – Robert Southwell

Another vision of the Nativity; from an onlooker in the cold who is warmed by the bright glow and love emanating from the infant Christ.

Minstrels – William Wordsworth

Christmas is also a time for music - carolling or otherwise. Here, the air is filled with an enchanting Christmas tune played by a group of minstrels and heard by people far and wide.

The Mahogany Tree – William Makepeace Thackeray

Towering or tiny, authentic or artificial – Christmas trees are one of the most cheering sights of the season; and here, the ideal gathering point for many a Christmas get-together.

This Section Is A Christmas Tree – Vachel Lindsay

Another ode to the Christmas tree – this one loaded with lots of lovely delights and pretty toys…

Christmas In India – Rudyard Kipling

One for globetrotters or perhaps those who fancy escaping the fierce winter chill – a celebration of Christmas in a far hotter clime…

Love Came Down At Christmas – Christina Rossetti

Many different emotions can come to characterise Christmas (not all of them good…), but Christina Rossetti reminds of the one that overrides them all – love.