Wednesday, December 21, 2005
It’s Christmas!
The True Christmas
So stick up ivy and the bays,
And then restore the heathen ways.
Green will remind you of the spring,
Though this great day denies the thing,
And mortifies the earth and all
But your wild revels, and loose hall.
Could you wear flowers, and roses strow
Blushing your breasts’ warm snow,
That very dress your lightness will
Rebuke, and wither at the ill.
The brightness of this day we owe
Not unto music, masque nor show:
Nor gallant furniture, nor plate;
But to the manger’s mean estate.
His life while here, as well as birth,
Was but a check to pomp and mirth;
And all man’s greatness you may see
Condemned by his humility.
Then leave your open house and noise,
To welcome him with holy joys,
And the poor shepherd’s watchfulness:
Whom light and hymns from Heaven did bless.
What you abound with, cast abroad
To those that want, and ease your load.
Who empties thus, will bring more in;
But riot is both loss and sin.
Dress finely what comes not in sight,
And then you keep your Christmas right.
‘The True Christmas’ is by Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), who is sometimes called Wales’s greatest poet. It was first published in 1678 but was probably written some time between 1648 and 1650. Almost all Vaughan’s poetry (if we discount his earliest verse, described by one critic as “mediocre and dully derivative”) was written in a concentrated burst of inspiration between 1648-1655.
This poem shows that some themes haven’t changed much over three and a half centuries. Nowadays there are complaints that Christmas has become too commercial and its Christian aspect has become diminished. Back in the seventeenth century the complaint was that people were turning Christmas into an excuse for “wild revels” and losing sight of its humble, sombre origins in the birth of the baby Jesus. In this poem Vaughan seeks to set out the rules for “the true Christmas”. By which he means a quiet, austere Christian one, with no fun.
In part it’s an angry and despairing poem. Those first two lines are bitterly sarcastic. To put up decorations (“bays” means laurel) is to mock the essence of Christmas, taking us back to the time when it was a pagan feast, not a holy anniversary. The speaker in the poem - and there’s no real reason not to conflate the voice with that of the writer himself, Henry Vaughan - is a dour religious fundamentalist. And as those bitter first two lines indicate, he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. People are treating Christmas as an occasion for jollity. Dour Henry is determined to point out the error of their ways and advise them on what the holiday should really be all about.
Vaughan doesn’t like the colour green. It’s inappropriate for Christmas. The colour he thinks more suitable, by implication, is black. The birthday of Christ “mortifies the earth and all”. I guess he has in mind the barren state of the landscape, stripped of leaves. But he’s also surely thinking of Christ’s fate on the cross. December 25 reminds him of the infant’s destiny and of the crucifixion. It is a day that makes him think of death. And these sombre thoughts make the irresponsible frivolity of people celebrating Christmas all the more appalling to a true Christian.
Outside, the landscape is one of death, but indoors there are “wild revels” and a matching horror – a “loose hall”. By “hall” I assume Vaughan means either the entrance passage to a house or the principal living room of a house; “loose” means “released from restraint”, which for Vaughan presumably refers to lavish decorations. But “loose” also carries that secondary sense of “morally lax, dissolute, promiscuous”. A sprig of mistletoe offers a licence for a couple to kiss – who knows what abominations may follow on from that?
Conventionally, the noun most likely to be attached to “loose” in that secondary sense is “woman”. And sure enough Vaughan’s attention then shifts to a frivolous, vain female who might use Christmas as an excuse to drape herself in floral decorations. That wonderful oxymoron warm snow indicates the tension in Vaughan's attitude to sinful woman. This “lightness” - light in the sense of shallow and inconsequential - will cause the flowers and roses she wears to wither, rebuking her for her ill-considered vanity. The woman’s irresponsible “lightness” brings its own echoing rebuke: “brightness”. That brightness is metaphysical - the blazing glory of Christ’s birth in a common manger, a source of spiritual illumination far greater than trifles such as music, masques, furniture or gold or silver plate.
The next line strikes me as a clumsy one - “His life while here, as well as birth” – but I can see that Vaughan needed that last word to emphasize, using rhyme, his next killer line: “Was but a check to pomp and mirth”.
Those are the two things Vaughan hates most about Christmas – pomp (meaning ornate display, i.e. Christmas decorations) and mirth. Mirth is quite unacceptable. As is “noise” and “riot”. Instead the good Christian should stop all this partying and go out of the house in search of “those that want” and give generously. But what, finally, seems to vex Vaughan more than anything is Christmas decorations:
Dress finely what comes not in sight,
And then you keep your Christmas right.
But what is it that “comes not in sight”? My guess is he means the soul, which should be clothed with true Christian humility. Whereas to “Dress finely” your house with ivy and laurel, to fill it with mirth, and to indulge in “riot” and “noise”, is to make your Christmas unholy and wrong.
To understand the point of view of this poem it helps to know the biographical context. Vaughan’s great outpouring of religious verse was rooted in the stress and conflict of his life in the late 1640s and early 1650s. Henry Vaughan’s brother William died in 1648, aged about twenty. Vaughan was shattered by his bereavement. As a supporter of the Royalist side, Vaughan was equally broken by the experience of the English Civil War and by the execution of Charles I in 1649. At this time of great personal crisis he discovered the poetry of George Herbert, which exerted an enormous influence over his writing.
Henry Vaughan had powerful personal reasons to have death on his mind, to feel gloomy and despairing, and to be disgusted at the thought of other people cheerfully enjoying Christmas. From his point of view the Church had in any case been besmirched by the victory of the Parliamentary side. In the words of Stevie Davies, in her excellent critical biography Henry Vaughan (1995), “The earthly church had been outlawed and its sacred architecture smashed. Vaughan was left alone with his Bible, the Book of Nature and the moodily chiaroscuro resources of his inner spirit.”
On which note, a very merry Christmas to all readers of The Sharp Side. May your halls always be loose and your revels all be wild. This blog is temporarily shutting down in order to enjoy the kind of Christmas which would have made Henry Vaughan very unhappy indeed. Should you want more, you can find my own creative contribution to the Christmas spirit here.
Back on 3 January.
So stick up ivy and the bays,
And then restore the heathen ways.
Green will remind you of the spring,
Though this great day denies the thing,
And mortifies the earth and all
But your wild revels, and loose hall.
Could you wear flowers, and roses strow
Blushing your breasts’ warm snow,
That very dress your lightness will
Rebuke, and wither at the ill.
The brightness of this day we owe
Not unto music, masque nor show:
Nor gallant furniture, nor plate;
But to the manger’s mean estate.
His life while here, as well as birth,
Was but a check to pomp and mirth;
And all man’s greatness you may see
Condemned by his humility.
Then leave your open house and noise,
To welcome him with holy joys,
And the poor shepherd’s watchfulness:
Whom light and hymns from Heaven did bless.
What you abound with, cast abroad
To those that want, and ease your load.
Who empties thus, will bring more in;
But riot is both loss and sin.
Dress finely what comes not in sight,
And then you keep your Christmas right.
‘The True Christmas’ is by Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), who is sometimes called Wales’s greatest poet. It was first published in 1678 but was probably written some time between 1648 and 1650. Almost all Vaughan’s poetry (if we discount his earliest verse, described by one critic as “mediocre and dully derivative”) was written in a concentrated burst of inspiration between 1648-1655.
This poem shows that some themes haven’t changed much over three and a half centuries. Nowadays there are complaints that Christmas has become too commercial and its Christian aspect has become diminished. Back in the seventeenth century the complaint was that people were turning Christmas into an excuse for “wild revels” and losing sight of its humble, sombre origins in the birth of the baby Jesus. In this poem Vaughan seeks to set out the rules for “the true Christmas”. By which he means a quiet, austere Christian one, with no fun.
In part it’s an angry and despairing poem. Those first two lines are bitterly sarcastic. To put up decorations (“bays” means laurel) is to mock the essence of Christmas, taking us back to the time when it was a pagan feast, not a holy anniversary. The speaker in the poem - and there’s no real reason not to conflate the voice with that of the writer himself, Henry Vaughan - is a dour religious fundamentalist. And as those bitter first two lines indicate, he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. People are treating Christmas as an occasion for jollity. Dour Henry is determined to point out the error of their ways and advise them on what the holiday should really be all about.
Vaughan doesn’t like the colour green. It’s inappropriate for Christmas. The colour he thinks more suitable, by implication, is black. The birthday of Christ “mortifies the earth and all”. I guess he has in mind the barren state of the landscape, stripped of leaves. But he’s also surely thinking of Christ’s fate on the cross. December 25 reminds him of the infant’s destiny and of the crucifixion. It is a day that makes him think of death. And these sombre thoughts make the irresponsible frivolity of people celebrating Christmas all the more appalling to a true Christian.
Outside, the landscape is one of death, but indoors there are “wild revels” and a matching horror – a “loose hall”. By “hall” I assume Vaughan means either the entrance passage to a house or the principal living room of a house; “loose” means “released from restraint”, which for Vaughan presumably refers to lavish decorations. But “loose” also carries that secondary sense of “morally lax, dissolute, promiscuous”. A sprig of mistletoe offers a licence for a couple to kiss – who knows what abominations may follow on from that?
Conventionally, the noun most likely to be attached to “loose” in that secondary sense is “woman”. And sure enough Vaughan’s attention then shifts to a frivolous, vain female who might use Christmas as an excuse to drape herself in floral decorations. That wonderful oxymoron warm snow indicates the tension in Vaughan's attitude to sinful woman. This “lightness” - light in the sense of shallow and inconsequential - will cause the flowers and roses she wears to wither, rebuking her for her ill-considered vanity. The woman’s irresponsible “lightness” brings its own echoing rebuke: “brightness”. That brightness is metaphysical - the blazing glory of Christ’s birth in a common manger, a source of spiritual illumination far greater than trifles such as music, masques, furniture or gold or silver plate.
The next line strikes me as a clumsy one - “His life while here, as well as birth” – but I can see that Vaughan needed that last word to emphasize, using rhyme, his next killer line: “Was but a check to pomp and mirth”.
Those are the two things Vaughan hates most about Christmas – pomp (meaning ornate display, i.e. Christmas decorations) and mirth. Mirth is quite unacceptable. As is “noise” and “riot”. Instead the good Christian should stop all this partying and go out of the house in search of “those that want” and give generously. But what, finally, seems to vex Vaughan more than anything is Christmas decorations:
Dress finely what comes not in sight,
And then you keep your Christmas right.
But what is it that “comes not in sight”? My guess is he means the soul, which should be clothed with true Christian humility. Whereas to “Dress finely” your house with ivy and laurel, to fill it with mirth, and to indulge in “riot” and “noise”, is to make your Christmas unholy and wrong.
To understand the point of view of this poem it helps to know the biographical context. Vaughan’s great outpouring of religious verse was rooted in the stress and conflict of his life in the late 1640s and early 1650s. Henry Vaughan’s brother William died in 1648, aged about twenty. Vaughan was shattered by his bereavement. As a supporter of the Royalist side, Vaughan was equally broken by the experience of the English Civil War and by the execution of Charles I in 1649. At this time of great personal crisis he discovered the poetry of George Herbert, which exerted an enormous influence over his writing.
Henry Vaughan had powerful personal reasons to have death on his mind, to feel gloomy and despairing, and to be disgusted at the thought of other people cheerfully enjoying Christmas. From his point of view the Church had in any case been besmirched by the victory of the Parliamentary side. In the words of Stevie Davies, in her excellent critical biography Henry Vaughan (1995), “The earthly church had been outlawed and its sacred architecture smashed. Vaughan was left alone with his Bible, the Book of Nature and the moodily chiaroscuro resources of his inner spirit.”
On which note, a very merry Christmas to all readers of The Sharp Side. May your halls always be loose and your revels all be wild. This blog is temporarily shutting down in order to enjoy the kind of Christmas which would have made Henry Vaughan very unhappy indeed. Should you want more, you can find my own creative contribution to the Christmas spirit here.
Back on 3 January.
# posted by Ellis : 6:06 PM
