Season’s Greetings
Dec 20 2010


A Christmas thaw,
the streets awash
in gritty slush,
salt-encrusted fenders.
A van with a red velvet bow
on its bumper,
and a rusty truck
sporting a festive wreath.
A standard sedan
has a green button in front,
an adorable nose
of plastic mistletoe
to kiss someone under.

Even the lifeguards at the pool
wore cute little Santa hats.

The seasonal spirit
is contagious,
an epidemic of decoration
overtaking the world.
A white Christmas
with teeth-clenching carols
to afflict us,
from tinny speakers
hidden in storefronts, and parking lots.

The streets will freeze
into minefields of congealed slush.

My next door neighbours
are off to the Bahamas
for the next two weeks,
where they will celebrate beside the pool.
Their house is dark,
except for an elegant tree
trimmed with tiny white lights
framed in the window.
I appreciate
this modest display
their tasteful restraint.

I think of the tree
in that over-heated house
dropping more needles each day,
until its lush green branches
are scrawny twigs.
A skeleton tree
festooned with lights.
Like a wizened old lady
with too much make-up
who can’t disguise her age.

But from a distance
a perfect scene —
the angelic tree, pure and simple,
through a picture window
touched by frost.


All true. The Bahamas, the 2 weeks, the elegant tree. Even the cutely decorated cars and lifeguards. I’ve never noticed people decorating their cars before. So it’s either something new this season; or I just haven’t been very observant! Anyway, it’s this almost unseemly proliferation that gave rise to the rather bleak metaphor of contagion and affliction.(The "teeth-clinching" carol is -- what else! -- "Little Drummer Boy".)

I think we all feel torn by the season: a religious celebration appropriated by a secular world; the clash of the spiritual and material; the blatant excess in a time when nature is all about scarcity and hunkering down. Which is how the poem works, whipsawing the reader between beauty and tastelessness, between cynicism and hope. So the incongruity, interruptions, and modest misdirection are all very intentional.

I end on an uplifting note. So there: I'm not as negative and cynical as you'd think!