Christmas Christianity
Christmas Christianity
1/25/2006
Here’s a poem I wrote around Christmas time this year. I’m trying to understanding the church year and its celebrations in female terms. Surely Christmas of all times is birth-centered, relation-centered, human touch-centered.
At Christmas
It’s the only time of year I wear red, the obvious color,
loved by everyone. They say it favors me, matches
the spider veins of my cheeks, like Santa’s,
or the glowing nose of Rudolph.
I prefer orange, the hated color of Halloween and 60’s carpet,
but I take out red at Christmas when the world
turns white and only evergreens
display their color.
I wear Christmas crimson – not as some rite of blood shed,
but because I remember how a baby’s cheeks
turn red with crying, with cold,
with warm holding.
A baby’s lips turn red with sucking, and babbling, and
its toes glow positively rose while kicking
at the air, pumping blood into
precise paths.
It’s not the sacrifice I reflect in my red turtle-necks
and Christmas plaid slacks, no, it’s the
newly-born flesh, flushed with
rushing life.