CHRISTMAS POEM 2020
WOULD ANYTHING BE DIFFERENT?
rgh 2020
If history washed out Christmas
Such no deity could find
If today jumped to the morrow
And blocked it from our mind
Would anything be different?
Were that day to us be blind
No Caesar’s census taken
Though numbers quite the same
One little life left off the rolls
With no great need to blame
Would anything be different?
If Jesus never came
The shepherds would keep watching
If that night were kept at bay
The sheep would bleat to rising dawn
To face another day
Would anything be different?
Were the angels called away
Were to the inn that day lost
The space would be just right.
No family need it turn away
Put pregnant pair to flight.
Would anything be different?
No need for sleep on Christmas night
And were that day forgotten
No star to blaze the sky
No light to show the people
Where the sacred Child lie.
Would anything be different?
If the Magi need not try
What then of that strange threesome
Were the holy night be lost
No need to make the journey
Fighting wind and cold and frost
Would anything be different?
If they never paid cost.
Would anything be different?
Had time skipped Christmas day
Would life remain as always
Each living in his way
Would anything be different?
Were a Babe not born on hay
Would carpenters keep sawing
Would the lad still climb a tree
Would housewives rock and dandle
Their infants on the knee
Would anything be different?
If time be Christmas free
So humor this poor poet
And give him ears to hear
How life would seem so empty
Were Christmas skipped each year
Would anything be different?
Yes, everything we fear
The shepherds upward looking
Would hear no singing sky
The inn would house its clients
And take in all who try
Yes everything’d be different!
If Christmas day must die
Though Caesar still be reigning
No census he’d demand
Nor pregnant girl would travel
With donkey’s leash in hand.
Yes all would be so different!
Were no Christmas in the land
But of all the things forgotten
No greater than this one
Would not to us be given
Salvation in God’s Son
Oh all would be so different!
Had Christmas Day not come
So come with me, consider if
That day from year be torn
All’d be dark and gloomy
No hope, all men forlorn
How life would be so different!
If Jesus were not born
Around we see so many
No ‘membrance of that day.
They go about their business
And do it all their way
How life would be so different!
If Messiah came to stay
So let us please now quickly
This exhortation hear
Praise Christmas day supremely
Hold His birth so dear
And all would be so different!
Should Christmas rule the year.