Merry Christmas
Photo by Joan Leotta of her late son Joey’s Christmas stocking
Two poems by Joan Leotta
A Promise to Our Son
Christmas is for celebration—
festive meals, family joy.
For us there’s always, also sorrow.
We dearly miss our darling boy.
That first holiday after he’d departed
I hung his stocking in its place
where it mocked me as I darted
about to fill to overflowing its three mates.
Christmas morning after we’d emptied ours
stockings of their treasures
I took his empty one down that same hour
and my grief grew beyond all measure.
The next year I started to write letters to him as my solution.
My notes to him now fill his stocking –I’ve kept that resolution
Christmas Ghosts
In Dickens’ time, ghost stories
vied with the true tale of the holiday
For time and space in celebrations
Our family embraced not random
Spooky stories, our Christmas eve
Included a recounting
of Dickens’ own tale—A Christmas Carol.
For many years we laughed and shivered
over movie versions.
When our children grew old enough to
read the tale themselves,
they decided to perform the tale for us,
in a duet telling of their own making.
Using old clothes, various mop tops and
tablecloths for costumes, props
they commandeered the living room
as their stage right after our seven fishes dinner.
One year Jennie was Scrooge and Joe
played all the ghosts and other characters
The next year Joe played Scrooge,
Jennie all the other parts.
Year after year they alternated.
Joe once told me he liked the
challenge of being all the ghosts
the best but to share that pleasure
with his sister, kept the rotation tradition.
We’ve lately gone to Ford’s theatre
for their annual performance
of this classic but in my mind
there is no finer production’
than theirs, especially the times
when Joe played his favorite role-
the role all the ghosts.
Both poems are dedicated to:
Joseph Gabriel Leotta 1982-2002
Christmas Eve by Andrea Potos
My grandmother's long drapes parted to reveal
her miniature tree strewn with gold
globes and white lights---my beacon
as I dodged the ice and rushed up to the sound of her
hands clapping as she ushered us all
into her apartment (so warm it could have been tropical);
and my ancient grandfather wobbling towards us, laughing;
all evening the chatter of my mother and sister,
cousins and uncles and aunts,
tinkling of ice and soda in tall glasses,
before my grandmother unveiled
the crystal platter crowded with her amber baklava,
her snowy kourambeides, and the one I craved
all year---melamakarona---her magic
mingling of moist and dry, cinnamon and honey
seeping on to my tongue as she fed me
another and another. I knew then
how impossible it was that she would ever die.
From Yaya’s Cloth
Christmas Trees in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, 2016 by Wilda Morris
The artificial evergreen labeled “United Kingdom” is topped with a crown in honor of the Queen. Teacups dangle from the branches. My British friends don’t trim their trees that way. Surely the Irish don’t spangle Christmas trees with sparkling shamrocks and trinkets like those traded in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day or top them a tall green hat seemingly fashioned for a large leprechaun. No way! No one in Japan festoons a tree with fans like those the geishas wave so fetchingly. The evergreen marked “USA” is tricked out with flags, and red, white and blue spheres. No angel or silver star towers over them for there sits Uncle Sam’s top hat, size XXXXL. We didn’t even decorate our tree that way the year our grandson returned from Iraq. Maybe we should have done so.
Two poems by Shaun Pankoski
Traditions
I used to watch the Christmas holidays
like I was driving by an accident.
Someone was drunk, someone was shouting,
someone was crying
behind a locked bedroom door.
There were holes punched in walls,
holes punched in hearts. It was horrible,
but you couldn't look away.
That first year you suggested
we hang lights on the house, I recoiled.
But to ruin your fun felt worse,
so when you brought home
three hundred lights
on seventy feet of cord,
said, “Don't worry, babe,
I make um nice,” and did.
Well, I couldn't look away.
We've had a string of Christmases since.
The tiny brass hooks stay up all year,
equally spaced, waiting.
And when the lights are hung,
when we stand together in the driveway,
all I see now is you. A little boy in footed pjs,
hiding under his grandmother's tree,
warmed by the bubble lights and dreaming.
Awaiting the Return of the Sun God
Grilled cheese and tomato soup
on the longest night of the year.
I watch my cat settle her old bones
into her favorite chair –
a high backed, long legged bar stool.
A clear vantage point, one eye open.
Strategic, even as a kitten.
My Yule is plain. No holly, ivy
or mistletoe. No wreaths or logs
for bright fires to burn words
or to set intentions. Just me,
listening to the little chirp
of her aged breathing
as we both grow old this night,
waiting
for the Horse
to chase the moon away,
to bring us light.
Their First Christmas in Port Hueneme, CA by Mary Ellen Talley
When a large box of walnuts arrive
in the mail, the young couple think
the gift might help their meagre Christmas.
Oh, the shelling and eating those nuts
while they were parked in a Navy town
studio apartment. They mailed gifts
of walnut fudge and cranberry nut bread.
The couple squeezed Elmer’s Glue
to fix the empty shells together,
looped and tucked red satin ribbon
to comprise a Santa-worthy bag
of fifty ornaments to hang
from pine needles light as loneliness.
Now this Seattle night, fifty years later,
they open the container of ribboned-walnuts
to hang some on a blue spruce,
alongside souvenir vacation ornaments
and some their children had made:
shooting stars made of dried applesauce
and cinnamon, a God’s Eye made of yarn
and toothpicks, and a gingerbread boy
decorated by their Kindergarten son,
under an angel topper that still reminds them
of their baby daughter. These parents place
red-ribboned nutshells on low branches
as they tell and retell adult children
and their children’s children such stories
of their first richest Christmas ever.
Three poems by Loraine Caputo
EPIPHANY
In a corner adobe home
Christmas lights adorn
an altar
Women crowd at the open
window & door
singing to the Virgin
In this falling dusk
a single-horse cart
Snaking behind
four young boys
hanging on
Galloping rollerskating
down the street
Beyond the tree-hidden shore
Volcán Concepción rises
from Lago Cocibolca
Capped in its
own smoke flowing
down steep slopes
The full moon is
already high &
bright
first published in:Assisi : An Online Journal of Arts and Letters
SOUNDS OF SILENCE
(Quito, Ecuador)
These Christmas Eve streets
echo with the mournful
song of a blind
man’s accordion
These Christmas Eve streets
beneath the dim light
of a waning crescent moon
yet to be arisen
These Christmas Eve streets
echoing with the footfall
of families going to mass
announced by silent bells
the cry of a new-born
babe in a manger
in a parish church
bathed in the perfume
of palo santo
The silence of footfalls
upon centuries-old
wooden floors
the silence of prayers
before the crèche broken
by a baby’s cry
These Christmas Eve streets
echoing with the silence
of the departed blind
accordion
published in: Crêpe & Penn
MIDNIGHT NAVIDAD
(Buenos Aires, Argentina)
In these narrow streets
of San Telmo
lit by a nearly
full moon
Midnight Navidad
erupts with the burst
of fireworks
set by boys & men
The sparkles reflect
in windows of
Gardel’s day
The cracks splinter the
mourning song
of bandoneón
In the shadows
of doorways stand
families shawled in
the cool of summer’s eve
& the spirits perished
from cholera & yellow fever
of immigrants surviving
in cramped conventillos
published in: North Dakota Quarterly
Peace With What is Now by Elaine Sorrentino
on Christmas Eve
Life is hardly what it used to be.
Gone is the take-charge dad tending the fire
with such rapt attention, you’d imagine
it on the precipice of becoming a raging inferno.
My children, once begging for approval
and guidance, now no longer tug
at my skirt; grown and wed and content.
My mother, conductor of holiday festivities,
forgetful and feeble,
unable to navigate everyday tasks unassisted.
Our Christmas Eve celebration complete,
children and spouses nestled into their guest rooms,
Mom, snores quietly in the guest room;
Yes, it’s different, yet waves of contentment
wash away my melancholy, embrace me
like a Yuletide comforter fresh from the dryer.
Advent by Rosemary Boehm
During the War, we made a wreath
with fresh pine twigs. Four candles.
We always had candles because
the lights failed often, a power station
bombed perhaps. You never knew.
For the Advent wreath we needed
fat red ones, but white ones would do.
And I was allowed to light each one,
one every Advent Sunday, until
there were four, and Christmas
was only a second away.
I had an old Advent calendar from ‘before’,
before I was even born. Some of the little
paper doors had already given in to use.
I knew the pictures behind them
by heart and yet looked forward to seeing
them again. Old friends. A promise
of wonders to come.
And there was little Baby Jesus, and his mum,
and the donkeys, camels, sheep,
the shepherds and the star.
My uncle had whittled a crib for me.
One day the miracle became a story
like any other.
From Life Stuff
Two poems by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer
Bethlehem Blessing
No snow fell the night that Jesus was born;
no gaily wrapped gifts lay awaiting next morn.
That first Christmas Day dawned unheralded, calm
to no grand ceremony, no glorious psalm.
Yet that simple tableau, Holy Mother and Child,
commenced grace everlasting for souls sin-defiled.
With love pure as sunrise, with mercy for all,
God reached out, through a baby, and put forth a call.
Millennia later, midst great celebrations
distracted by presents and gay decorations
our focus is blurred as we try to keep sight
of the Babe who was born on that holiest night.
Help us, oh, Father, to refix our gaze
on Bethlehem’s miracle during these days.
Give us the wisdom to seek and embrace
Your bountiful, free, unconditional grace.
For truly that blessing bestowed in a stall
is the one perfect gift on this earth for us all.
Nativity 911
When we picture the manger scene,
we picture peace.
But, come on, now—think about it:
a crew of keyed up shepherds,
a barnful of displaced livestock,
a village crammed with cranky travelers?
There was no peace in that stable!
Jesus encountered chaos from day one—
encounters it daily today—as do we.
Hurricanes, tsunamis, terrorism, crime…
for every joy in our lives,
there’s a burden to match it:
a friend diagnosed with cancer,
a marriage falling apart,
a layoff looming with bills to pay…
there is no peace on earth;
there is only Hope.
But Hope is what pulls us through—
helps us survive the disasters,
weather the storms,
watch for the silver lining.
And the silver lining is always there…
like blue skies shining above thunderclouds,
Hope is always there—
delivered to us in a manger amid
sheep bleats in dusty streets
and arguments in merchant’s tents—
that guiding star a flare proclaiming
"Lo! I am with you always—"
no matter how bad it gets,
no matter how low you go—
even until the end of the world,
I am there."
The Day Before Christmas 2021 by Sharon Waller Knutson
It’s a scene from a Christmas card.
The sky white as the snow
covering the ground. Snowflakes
the size of lacy doilies cling
to his cap, fleecy jacket and jeans
as he trudges up the hill
to retrieve the mail, mostly junk
and bills addressed
to my deceased in-laws
and occasionally a letter
forwarded to us from Arizona.
He shivers as he sees the name
of his father’s oldest friend
on the return address
of the envelope addressed
to his mother who has been dead
for five months - a man who would
be more than 115 today
if he was still alive.
He recalls his parents telling
him stories about his father
being jealous when his mother
danced with his best friend
as he played the accordion
at the church dances they both
attended In the late 1930s
before he got the nerve
to ask the pretty girl six years
younger than him for a date.
When he opens the envelope
he sees a Christmas card
with the photo of a balding
gentleman of his generation
with a gray goatee and moustache,
a dark haired woman and three
thirty something men – long hair
on one and beards on the other two.
Joy, peace, love, family
is printed on the card
along with their first names.
There is no signature
or personal message.
His memory meanders to 1957
when he was ten and his parents
put him on a bus to the Teton
Valley and the family picked him up
at the bus stop, took him home
with them where they ate supper
and he slept in the top bunk
Of one of the boy’s beds
before driving to his grandparent’s
Home the next day. He wonders
if that man in the picture
with his father’s name is one
of the sons he played with
or if he hadn’t been born yet.
When his mother took her last
breath, he had called all the numbers
on her list of people to call and they
weren’t on it. He checks her Christmas
card list and there they are and recalls
the joy she felt sending and receiving
greeting cards and is sorry she missed
this card. He sits at the computer
typing: I’m sorry to inform you
of the passing of my mother,
feeling like he is writing
to a ghost from another life.
A Christmas Eve Toast by Wilda Morris
I toast the snow swept from the sidewalk,
the perfumed candles on the altar,
each member of the congregation
entering the darkened sanctuary
with a sense of exhaustion or expectation,
the organist or pianist who plays the carols,
and soloist who sings O Holy Night.
I toast Joseph sitting solemnly by a wooden manger,
the straw in which a baby doll is laid,
and Mary, pushing hair from her eyes
before she reaches to pick up her child
and cuddle him in her arms, just as her mother
cuddled her. I toast the anxious angels
with homemade wings announcing the holy birth
to shepherds in flannel bathrobes
herding preschoolers who say baa, baa
and wave to their parents in the audience
as they crawl to their assigned place.
I toast the three sages or kings
coming up the aisle to bring their fancy gifts,
the ushers who pass the light of their candles
down each row, and the whole congregation
which stands to sing Silent Night, their eyes misted
as they go out into the darkened world from which they came.
Photo by Lynn White of her Christmas tree
Three poems by Lynn White
Christmas Tree
Trimming the tree was a Christmas Eve ritual
in my family.
Each year my cousin would come to help my mum.
They would carefully take the glass baubles from the box
that used to hold her big doll called Topsy.
Then they would put them all in their special place
in my family.
“No the elephant doesn’t go there,
that’s where the peacock should be
and the Christmas pudding goes above.”
Everything had it’s place on the Christmas tree
in my family.
There were shiny miniature crackers never to be pulled
and curly, coloured candles never to be lit, for economy.
No tinsel was allowed for that was cheating.
Only baubles to cover the tree, hiding the green.
The glass baubles had belonged to my cousin,
so had the tree. And earlier, to her mother and granny,
all in my family.
The only family to fall out over trimming a tree,
my cousin’s husband used to say with some truth,
as every year the arguments as to which
bauble should go where were replayed
in my family.
So much stress over trimming a Christmas tree,
that I think they drank Santa’s sherry!
They must have needed it!
And ate his mince pies,
after trimming the tree
in my family.
First published in Silver Birch Press
Christmas Crow
We watched the crow with fascination
as it tap tapped on the window pane,
saw its black eyes gleaming,
its wet feathers shining
in the moonlight.
And we understood.
We understood that it wanted to join us,
to perch amongst the baubles
on our shining tree
to share our fireside warmth
on Christmas Eve
and escape
the cold winter rain.
We heard it promise
to sing for us
We opened the window
and let it in.
It crowed a Christmas carol.
First published in Third Wednesday Magazine,
The Spirit Of Christmas To Come
The ghost slid down the rabbit hole
on a dark wintery night.
He expected to arrive in Wonderland
if such a place exists
and he believed it did,
just as he believed in ghosts and Santa Claus.
There was a full glass on a table.
He looked for a label saying: “Drink Me”.
But there was no label. So he drank it anyway.
It left a nice warm feeling inside him,
“spirit for the spirit”, he laughed aloud.
There was a plate of pastries.
He looked for a label saying: “Eat Me”,
but there was no label. So he ate them anyway,
He lay back contentedly
then smiled somewhat sheepishly
at the old man dressed in red carrying a large sack
who was looking none too pleased at the scene.
“Well”, said the ghost,
“Anyone can mistake a chimney for a rabbit hole.”
First published in Bindweed, Winter Wonderland Anthology
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