cosmic_llin

Right!
Now we're in December. And I don't have a proper advent calendar, so instead I'm going to subject you folk to one Christmas-type thing per day until the 25th!

Inspired by

cadiliniel's Christmas excitement, and our sadly aborted viewing last night of Miracle on 34th Street, I've decided to post this poem first.
I know I'm not a Christian any more, but Christmas for me is about children, and feeling like a child again, and this poem has a little bit of that childhood Christmas magic:

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
'Now they are all on their knees,'
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
'Come; see the oxen kneel,

'In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,'
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy, The Oxen