Poem of the Week 2024/52

 On Christmas

With footstep slow, in furry pall yclad,

    His brows enwreathed with holly never-sear,

    Old Christmas comes, to close the waned year;

    And ay the shepherd's heart to make right glad;

Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had,

    To blazing hearth repairs, and nut-brown beer,

    And views, well-pleased, the ruddy prattlers dear

    Hug the gray mongrel; meanwhile maid and lad

Squabble for roasted crabs. – Thee, Sire, we hail,

    Whether thine aged limbs thou dost enshroud,

    In vest of snowy white, and hoary veil,

Or wrap'st thy visage in a sable cloud;

    Thee we proclaim with mirth and cheer, nor fail

    To greet thee well with many a carol loud.

– John Codrington Bamfylde

This sonnet from 1778 comes by its antiquated language honestly. as well as its rustic presentation of Christmas, so different from the glittery festival we are maybe overly familiar with today: the holiday was often under Protestant suspicion, as being too pagan or too Popish; this poem dates from before the iconography of Santa Claus/Father Christmas was set, before the German Prince Albert popularized the Christmas tree in England, before Charles Dickens helped make the holiday a signal time of festive cheer, before Christmas became the linchpin of the capitalist year.

It does mark the closing out of one year, in the rural dead-time of winter; here, as so often with months, seasons, or holidays, the day is personified, as Old Christmas, & he does seem old, with his slow footsteps, wearing against the cold a furry pall (meaning a cloak or cloth covering, but the word is often associated with hearses & tombs, as well as with a feeling of gloom, or something that is losing its appeal), but also with evergreen (never-sear, that is, never browned) holly on his brow: an allegorical figure, & not just another old man suffering from the cold.

The close of the year is a time when farm-work is as much in abeyance as it's ever going to be, which is a good reason for the shepherd, his wandering sheep gathered safely home, to be glad. He has his roaring fire & his nut-brown ale (a type of brown ale made in northern England). One similarity with our current Christmas is that this is a family holiday; he watches his ruddy prattlers, that is, his children. Ruddy presumably because they are vigorous & healthy, prattlers because they are still young enough to speak in a childish, maybe even babyish, way. There is a young couple, or couple-to-be, flirting over roasted crabapples (the usual meaning of crab in early modern English). No sign of the shepherd's wife, who is possibly off somewhere keeping the household running, but otherwise a fun & festive holiday scene, though one devoid of our tinsel & the piles of presents.

The closing sestet hails Christmastime, vowing to greet it always with merriment & singing, no matter how it appears: in snowy white and hoary [frosty] veil, something like the White Christmas of our recurrent fantasies, even here in California, or wrapped in a dark cloud, preventing us from seeing his features. There's uncertainty here, as there always is about the future, but also a determination to greet whatever it is in an open spirit: not a bad resolution to keep, at any time of year.

I took this poem from A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival, edited by Paula R Feldman and Daniel Robinson.