If Christmas has just passed, all of the anticipation and celebration is banished for another year. It is hard to write about that magical and mysterious season when it is just over with. It would be easier to write about it in the summer. \u201cChristmas in July,\u201d means something: it means you have an unexpected gift, a celebration that seems out of place. \u201cChristmas in March\u201d doesn\u2019t mean anything. We can think about the crucifixion and resurrection anytime, and in fact, we are supposed to think about it rather pointedly at least once a week. But we keep our thoughts about Christmas confined to one special season. Easter doesn\u2019t even stay in one place, but Christmas is fixed on the calendar. The Crucifix is always on the wall, but the Nativity set only comes out once a year.<\/p>\n
Children, of course, go a little crazy at Christmas. G.K. Chesterton says they enjoy everything about Christmas \u2013 except getting smacked (which, he muses, is probably where that particular tradition began.) And while children do indeed enjoy Christmas, Chesterton claims he enjoys Christmas more as an adult than he did as a child. The appreciation of domesticity, like the appreciation of Virgil, increases with age. He says, \u201cThe fun of Christmas is founded on the seriousness of Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each year for over thirty years, G.K. Chesterton would write at least five or six articles on Christmas, along with one or two poems and some other odd piece, that would be spread among the journals for which he was a regular contributor and Yuletide issues of other journals for which he was not. His biographer Maisie Ward once expressed the desire to collect all of Chesterton\u2019s writings on Christmas into one volume, not only because there was such a wonderful variety of material available, but especially because this was a subject in which Chesterton\u2019s charity seemed to shine most brightly.<\/p>\n
It was Marie Smith who finally carried out Maisie\u2019s idea and created a book by Chesterton on Christmas. She would go on to put together five posthumous Chesterton collections, only one fewer than Dorothy Collins. The Spirit of Christmas<\/em> is probably the most successful and possibly the most satisfying.<\/p>\n This book could easily have been five times larger, but even though it represents only a fraction of Chesterton\u2019s Christmas writings, it is an excellent selection, containing both familiar delights and unusual gems. Presented in mostly chronological order, Marie provides a pleasing layout of poems, essays, stories and even the very rare play, \u201cThe Turkey and the Turk.\u201d When the book was published in 1984, most of its material was appearing between the covers of a book for the first time. The other rarity, in addition to the mummer\u2019s play, was the previously uncollected poem Gloria in Profundis \u2013 the paradoxical “Glory to God in the Lowest.\u201d<\/p>\n As is evident in such selections as \u201cThe Shop of Ghosts\u201d and \u201cThe Modern Scrooge,\u201d Chesterton shares an intimate connection to Christmas with his favorite writer, Charles Dickens. This is not surprising, since both of them share this intimate connection to Christmas with all the rest of Christendom. Chesterton argues that Dickens saved Christmas in England. Chesterton helped save Dickens in England, thereby preserving some of our Christmas traditions, including the snarling of seasonal fools whose sentiments amount to \u201cBah! Humbug!\u201d<\/p>\n The Nativity represents a detachment from the world that the world cannot explain, even though the world mocks it, feeds off it, dances frantically ’round it. But for one intense instant, everything stops, just as everything has to stop when a baby is born. Life is interrupted by life.<\/p>\n Almost every line of every Chesterton poem is a poem in itself. \u201cThe Truce of Christmas\u201d begins, \u201cPassionate peace is in the sky.\u201d Now that\u2019s a corker. We do not normally connect the adjective, \u201cpassionate,\u201d with the noun, \u201cpeace.\u201d But Christmas is founded on a paradox. It is a feast in defiance of winter. It is the story of a homeless family being celebrated in every home. It is kings bowing down. It is (in Chesterton\u2019s exquisite line that is surprisingly not included in this book) that moment when \u201cthe hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.\u201d We begin to consider what it means: \u201cpassionate peace is in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n There is one of his Christmas poems that grows more beautiful for me every time I read it. \u201cThe Wise Men.\u201d It ends with a verse that epitomizes G.K. Chesterton: humble yet triumphant, with a joy that still rattles the world:<\/p>\n Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Collection of Chesterton\u2019s Writings on Christmas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[961,962,1511],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chesterton-101","tag-christmas","tag-dorothy-collins","tag-maisie-ward"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nTo roar to the resounding plain,
\nAnd the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
\nFor God Himself is born again,
\nAnd we are little children walking
\nThrough the snow and rain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n