The Words of Christmas

Believe. Joy. Merry Christmas. Season’s Greetings. Peace on Earth.

Christmas is the season most defined by words. Words float in the air, wrap their ancient comfort around us, come unannounced in fragments. Pieces that stir our hearts. One word, one phrase can set off the chimes of memory that ring for Christmases past and call us to our better selves, call us to memories of untrammeled joy, sometimes to the aching sadness of loss. Tidings of great joy. Because there was no room. The stockings were hung. I’ll be home if only in my dreams. Santaaaa!. Humbug! A mad cacophony of words, sacred and secular, especially since the time of Charles Dickens.

Words may decorate our homes on pillows and on plaques. Believe. Joy. Hope. They weave their way around wreaths. Merry Christmas. Season’s Greetings. Written in flowing pseudo scroll. They festoon the fine china passed on from a Grandmother- the holly and the ivy, of all the trees that are in the wood the holly bears the crown- words to be puzzled over by a child. The words are paraded around on sweaters and sweatshirts, sometimes simply sincere, sometimes humorous and ironic. ‘Tis the season. Santa, I can explain. Naughty and Nice. Words are the heart of a well-chosen card, the emissaries of sentiment for those who find it hard to say the words they feel, for those who still follow a custom started in1843. A custom now perhaps more honoured in the breach than the observance as Hamlet declared – though not of the Christmas card.

Christmas gives adults permission to display children’s books. Perhaps ones they have kept from their own distant youth. A treasured copy of A Night Before Christmas with reproductions of the original Victorian illustrations. A Christmas Carol. A Child’s Christmas in Wales with its literary cachet. Perhaps The Grinch Who Stole Christmas for some humour. And in some homes there still might be found on a table top lectern a Bible opened to Luke 2:1-20. There went out a decree. All went to be taxed. Joseph also went with his espoused wife, being great with child. And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. And shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night. And the angel of the Lord came upon them. Sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: tidings of great joy. A Saviour which is Christ the Lord. The oldest words of Christmas.

We may hum the mostly forgotten words of carols once well known, now discarded, the faith they represented no longer embraced. Good King Wenceslas last looked out on the …. Is it feast or beast of Stephen? Oh well, la la la la. Joy to the world the Lord has come. Let earth receive her King. La, la, la, la – repeat, repeat the sounding joy. Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant – finishing with – come let us adore him, Christ the King – amazing, all words remembered. O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum – we know it means O Christmas tree in German but the words in German or in English elude us. Some import from the pagan past and grafted onto Christian celebration this decorating of trees we now recall. We three kings of Orient are,Trying to smoke a rubber cigar – good grief no! These the words taught by some elementary school joker during rehearsals for the Christmas concert. Words that earned him some snickers and begrudging respect for his boldness. Such old words.

New words. The Holidays. Happy Holidays surely burdened by the indignity of banal alliteration. But bearing the freight of good intention, inclusion, the now, the way things are. Holiday cards. Holiday trees. Holiday concerts. Holiday stockings. The nagging words of the market – Only ten more days, only nine days…. The commandeered words. Shop like Santa, save like Scrooge. Novelty words in song. Grandma got run over by a reindeer. How many removes from the original focus of Christmas? Now a classic according to A.M. Radio.

One day, for traditionalists January 6, (after the Twelve Days of Christmas) the words are gone.

Some may be packed away and even hauled off to storage units. Others, the ones that have floated in the air around us, recede like a wind dying down, are carried out on the cleansing tide of a New Year. Some words though may burrow into the heart of some lucky souls who carry the words, I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.