Sabbath Day Thoughts — Verse for the First Sunday in Christmas

“O Lord, You Were Born” 

— Ann Weems 

Each year about this time I try to be sophisticated 

and pretend I understand the bored expressions 

relating to the “Christmas spirit.” 

I nod when they say “Put the Christ back in Christmas.” 

I say yes, yes, when they shout “Commercial” and 

“Hectic, hectic, hectic.” 

After all, I’m getting older, 

and I’ve heard it said, “Christmas is for children.” 

But somehow a fa-la-la keeps creeping out…. 

So I’ll say it: 

I love Christmas tinsel 

and angel voices that come from the beds upstairs 

and the Salvation Army bucket 

and all the wrappings and festivities and special warm feelings. 

I say it is good, 

giving, 

praising, 

celebrating. 

So hooray for Christmas trees 

and candlelight 

and the good old church pageant. 

Hooray for shepherd boys who forget their lines 

and Wise Men whose beards fall off 

and Mary who giggles. 

O Lord, you were born! 

O Lord, you were born! 

And that breaks in upon my ordered life like bugles blaring. 

and I sing “Hark, the Herald Angels” 

in the most unlikely places. 

You were born 

and I will celebrate! 

I rejoice for the carnival of Christmas! 

I clap for the pajama-clad cherubs 

and the Christmas cards jammed in the mail slot. 

I o-o-o-oh for the turkey 

and ah-h-h-h for the Christmas pudding 

and thank God for the alleluias I see in the faces of people 

I don’t know 

and yet know very well. 

O Lord, there just aren’t enough choirboys to sing what I feel. 

There aren’t enough trumpets to blow. 

O Lord, I want bells to peal! 

I want to dance in the streets of Bethlehem! 

I want to sing with the heavenly host! 

For unto us a Son was given 

and he was called God with Us. 

For those of us who believe, 

the whole world is decorated in love! 

---

“Christmas at Sea” 

—Robert Louis Stevenson 

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand; 

The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand; 

The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea; 

And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee. 

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day; 

But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. 

We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout, 

And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about. 

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North; 

All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth; 

All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, 

For very life and nature we tacked from head to head. 

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared; 

But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard: 

So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high, 

And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye. 

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam; 

The good red fires were burning bright in every ‘long-shore home; 

The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out; 

And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about. 

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer; 

For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year) 

This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn, 

And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born. 

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, 

My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair; 

And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, 

Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves. 

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me, 

Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea; 

And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way, 

To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day. 

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall. 

“All hands to loose topgallant sails,” I heard the captain call. 

“By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,” our first mate Jackson, cried. 

…”It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,” he replied. 

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good, 

And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood. 

As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night, 

We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light. 

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me, 

As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea; 

But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, 

Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old. 

---

“The Sheep Herd” 

—Sister Mariella 

I am a shepherd—I have hated 

The smell of damp sheep in the rain, 

The pain 

Of clouted shoes on weary feet, 

The silly barking of watchdogs in the night, 

The blinding light 

Of summer suns on hillsides without shade. 

Nor anything I did not wish was not 

From hoar-frost on the meadow grass 

To dizzy stars that blinked on stupidly and bright. 

Last night 

I went with other men who tended sheep 

Over to Bethlehem to see— 

We did not know just what we’d come to see 

Who’d followed up a cloud of singing wings. 

Until we came to where a young girl held 

A little baby on her lap and smiled. 

She made me think of flowers, 

White flowers on long stems and blue night skies. 

Nothing happened— 

But today 

I have been shaken with the joy 

Of seeing hoar-frost wings 

Atilt upon tall grasses; the sun 

Upon the sheep, making their gray backs white 

And silvery 

Has hurt me with its beauty, and I heard 

The sound of the barking watchdogs break 

The tolling bells against the quiet hills. 

---

“Boxed” 

—Ann Weems 

I must admit to a certain guilt 

about stuffing the Holy Family into a box 

in the aftermath of Christmas. 

It’s frankly a time of personal triumph when, 

each Advent’s eve, I free them (and the others) 

from a year’s imprisonment 

boxed in the dark of our basement. 

Out they come, one by one, 

struggling through the straw, 

last year’s tinsel still clinging to their robes. 

Nevertheless, they appear, 

ready to take their place again 

in the light of another Christmas. 

The Child is first 

because he’s the one I’m most reluctant to box. 

Attached forever to his cradle, he emerges, 

apparently unscathed from the time spent upside down 

to avoid the crush of the lid. 

His mother, dressed eternally in blue, 

still gazes adoringly, 

in spite of the fact that 

her features are somewhat smudged. 

Joseph has stood for eleven months, 

holding valiantly what’s left of his staff, 

broken twenty Christmases ago 

by a child who hugged a little too tightly. 

The Wise Ones still travel, 

though not quite so elegantly, 

the standing camel having lost its back leg 

and the sitting camel having lost one ear. 

However, gifts intact, they are ready to move. 

The shepherds, walking or kneeling, 

sometimes confused with Joseph 

(who wears the same dull brown), 

tumble forth, followed by three sheep 

in very bad repair. 

There they are again, 

not a grand set surely, 

but one the children (and now the grandchildren) 

can touch and move about to reenact that silent night. 

When the others return, 

we will wind the music box on the back of the stable 

and light the Advent candles 

and go once more to Bethlehem. 

And this year, when it’s time to pack the figures away, 

we’ll be more careful that the Peace and Goodwill 

are not also boxed for another year! 

---

Ann Barr Weems was the daughter or a Presbyterian minister and the wife of a Presbyterian minister. She served as an elder with the Trinity Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. Ann was a noted writer, speaker, liturgist and worship leader. Among her seven published books or collections of poems, meant to be used in worship, in personal devotions, and in discussions, are Kneeling in Jerusalem, Kneeling in Bethlehem and the best-selling Psalms of Lament. She is also the author of the critically-acclaimed poem, “Balloons Belong in Church,” about her then four-year old son, Todd, who brought an orange balloon with pink stripes to church school one Sunday morning. Both poems shared here are from Kneeling in Bethlehem.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet, and travel writer. He spent time in Saranac Lake in pursuit of a cold air cure for tuberculosis. Lighthouse design was the family’s profession; Robert’s grandfather and uncles were all in the same field. His maternal grandfather, with whom he was quite close, was a Presbyterian minister. Stevenson once wrote, “Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them. Stevenson’s Christmas poem was first published in the Scots Observer, 1888.

Sister Mariella Gable was a Benedictine sister and an English professor at the College of Saint Benedict from 1928-73. She was also a Dante scholar, poet, editor and writer. She tirelessly promoted the cause of two then little-known authors, Flannery O’Connor and J.F. Powers, and introduced audiences in the United States to such Irish writers as Frank O’Connor, Sean O’Faolain, Mary Lavin, and Bryan MacMahon through her many essays and anthologies. “The Sheep Herd” was first published in 1946.

---