Annunciation
by Malcolm Guite
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Without Mary's 'Yes' to the angel, there would have been no Christmas. Malcolm Guite, the English poet and Anglican priest,  captures the moment with startling immediacy.
The image below is by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim.

We see so little, stayed on surfaces,
We calculate the outsides of all things,
Preoccupied with our own purposes
We miss the shimmer of the angels’ wings,
They coruscate around us in their joy
A swirl of wheels and eyes and wings unfurled,
They guard the good we purpose to destroy,
A hidden blaze of glory in God’s world.
But on this day a young girl stopped to see
With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;
The promise of His glory yet to be,
As time stood still for her to make a choice;
Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,
The Word himself was waiting on her word.

BC:AD
By U.A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009)
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This short and relatively unknown poem packs a colossal punch. The image is by the contemporary American artist, Daniel Bonnell.

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

A Poem for Christmas Eve
by Máire Mhac an tSaoi (1922-2021)

This lovely poem relates to the once widespread Irish tradition of placing a single lit candle in a window on Christmas Eve, signifying that in that house there was room and welcome for Mary and Joseph as they looked for shelter on the night of Jesus’ birth.

Oíche Nollaig – Carúl Nollag
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Le coinnle na n-aingeal tá an spéir amuigh breactha,
Tá fiacail an tseaca sa ghaoth ón gcnoc;
Adaigh an tine is téigh chun na leapa:
Luífidh Mac Dé ins an teach seo anocht.

Fág an doras ar leathadh ina coinne,
An Mhaighdean a thiocfaidh is a Naí ar a hucht;
Deonaigh do shuaimhneas a ligean, a Mhuire,
Luífidh Mac Dé ins an teach seo anocht.
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Bhí soilse ar lasadh i dteach sin na haíochta,
Cóiriú gan chaoile, bia agus deoch,
Do cheannaithe olla, do cheannaithe síoda,
Ach luífidh Mac Dé ins an teach seo anocht.

Christmas Eve - A Christmas Carol

With the angels’ candles the sky is now dappled,
The frost on the wind from the hill has a bite,
Kindle the fire and go to bed,
The Son of God will lie in this house tonight.

Leave the door on the latch  for her,
The Virgin who’ll come with the Child on her breast.
Deign to take your rest here, Mary -
The Son of God will lie in this house tonight.

The lights were lit in that inn of old,
Food and drink flowed freely there
For wool merchants, for silk merchants - 
But the Son of God will lie in this house tonight.

Listen  here to the poem sung in Irish by by Siobhán Ní Mhaoildhia.

The Oxen
By Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

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.

First published in The Times of London on Christmas Eve, 1915.

Christmas
By John Betjeman (1906-1984)

Click on the image to hear Betjeman reading his own poem. Be sure to wait for the powerful closing lines!

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true?  And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ?  For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

The House of Christmas
by GK Chesterton (1874-1936)
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This is the greatest of Chesterton's Christmas poems. The image is Tintoretto's Nativity, courtesy of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice.

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
 
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
 
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
 
A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost—-how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.
 
This world is wild as an old wife’s tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
 
To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Theotokos
by Malcolm Guite

Another breathtaking poem by Malcolm Guite, celebrating  Mary as the Theotokos ('God Bearer'). 
The picture is by Netherlandish artist, Geerten tot Sint Jans, painted around 1490. Click on the image for a 60-second tour of this enchanting work by the National Gallery, London.

You bore for me the One who came to bless
And bear for all and make the broken whole.
You heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call me again, for I am lost, and  wild
Waves suround me now. On this dark sea
Shine as a star and call me to the shore.
Open the door that all my sins would close
And hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold me too in Love’s last mystery
​And bring me to the One you bore for me.