Contested days of rightful claims
to celebrate the stories,
Rituals, symbols, and
traditions handed down
My children – will learn the rhythms
Of the Church catholic
Of Mary, Joseph, and the infant
Of divinity incarnate
And I have no qualms with criticisms
Posing my rites merely mimic
shadowy pagan practices
And juletide winter solstices
The story of Christmas
Hiding not the fact –
The divine repurposing,
Of men and men’s acts
And like the looting of Egypt
The treasures were freely given
The looters receiving riches
Brought them through the sea
So, I refrain from futile battles
Of whose holiday gets bought and sold
And devote myself to the stories
Faithfully enacted and retold
The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris’s Advent series on Moss Kingdom:
Incarnation, Christmas Eve, Kings, Some Kind of Glory, Chains, Gifts, Quotidian Couple, A Thousand Lights, Eve & Mary, Treasured Up, Christmas, Winter Staves, The Glorias, Cherubim, Joseph, Strange Redeemer, Womb, Magi, Temple Trough, Advent, Lord’s Day, Far as the Curse is Found, Jubilee, The Massacre of the Innocents, Liturgical Time
Other Advent poems on Moss Kingdom:
December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice, Of Edmund and Aslan, Tiptoe Hope, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats