Here’s a non-Christmas tree poem by Scott Bates for friends of the environment.
Tag Archives: Christmas
Inside These Wrappings, a Brighter Life
Spiritual Sunday Yesterday we had a white Christmas in Sewanee, Tennessee, where I am visiting my parents. The world was brown when we went to bed and white when we awoke. The symbolism of Christmas snow lies in the promise of wiping everything clean and starting anew. Grace appears to enter our fallen world. That’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Messiah (Christmas Portions), James Baldwin, Mark Doty, Music, Religion, Sonny's Blues Comments closed
A Roc for Christmas (Annual Bird Count)
Sports Saturday I don’t know whether bird watching is officially considered a sport but, what with Christmas falling on a “Sports Saturday,” let’s say it is. That way I have an excuse for writing about the annual Christmas bird count. Every year, between the middle of December and the first week in January, bird watchers […]
Our Greatest Christmas Movie
Film Friday It’s Christmas Eve, which gives me an excuse to write about what I consider cinema’s greatest Christmas movie: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s a Wonderful Life is a variation of the archetypal Christmas story, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Both feature extraterrestrial spirits. Scrooge is shown how the world will become […]
What Can I Give Him? Give Him My Heart
Spiritual Sunday Snow currently blankets southern Maryland as we enter the final days leading up to Christmas, making this the perfect time to print Christina Rossetti’s gorgeous poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”I love how it begins with hard and cold images and concludes with a simple gift of the heart. Although God is worshipped by […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Christina Rossetti, Julian of Norwich, Religion, Winter Comments closed
Midwinter Transformation: A Poem
A cold snap has hit the American east coast, including Maryland, and we are experiencing what Christina Rossetti calls “bleak midwinter,” with temperatures moving down into the teens. To cheer myself up, I turn to one of my father’s Christmas poems. My father has been writing these poems annually for years. He sends them out […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Bird Watcher's Christmas Dinner", Nature, Scott Bates Comments closed
An ABC of Children’s Books
As we enter the holiday season, you can expect a number of posts on children’s books. I have mentioned several times how one of my father’s great joys when we were growing up was reading us the books he had loved as a child. We got extra reading around the Christmas season. Here’s a poem […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "ABC of Books for Christmas", Children, children's books, Scott Bates Comments closed
The Divine Comedy, Doggerel Version
For a change of pace as we enter the Christmas season, I share here a light, witty, and very smart poem by my father on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The poem grew out of research that he was doing on Guillaume Apollinaire, the French poet who has been his scholarly subject. Don’t worry if you don’t […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Dante Dance", Add new tag, Dante, Divine Comedy, Scott Bates Comments closed
Peace on Earth and Good Will to All of You
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,” Tennyson writes in In Memoriam (see last Friday’s post). Bells mark different stages in Tennyson’s grieving process, and bells also defined my Sewanee childhood: All Saints’ Chapel has a fabulous carillon, which would play every Sunday afternoon and on special occasions. So to ring in 2010, I turned […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Comments closed
