Merry Christmas, 2013

 

 

I’m glad to have dime store Santas and plastic reindeer

To remember from my long-ago childhood,

With memories of cedar trees plucked from pastures

Shedding spiny needles on waxed hardwood floors.

I’m glad to have eaten large family dinners with shaking Jell-O salads

And Depression glass bowls filled with olives, the real star of the meal.

I’m glad to have worn rubber boots closed with elastic frogs

That failed to keep frigid cold from my childish legs

As I walked into Midnight Mass on starry nights under shadowy skies

Where not a single cloud bothered suppressing warmth from earth.

For without these memories what would Christmas be now?

Blaring canned music, multiple Santa Claus men at every store in town,

Sometimes sitting under forgotten suspended Halloween masks.

Now trees are decked out in color-coordinated glass balls

Costing the same price as a pair of chic designer shoes.

Gifts, gifts, gifts and commercialism galore.

No, without my memory of those simpler times when

Father Christmas sat among a flickering candle or two,

When paper chains and paper straw stars rested proudly

On tree limbs among tawdry silver tinsel strands,

I would be lost among the glimmer and glitz

Of today’s furry fat Santas and cold commercialism.

                                   Merry Christmas!