Streeter Blair, Pasture in Winter, 1960. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
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Detail from Is This You? by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson, via Mac Barnett.
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Vanessa Bell, hand-painted calendar for friends from 1951.
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Milton Avery, Pinecones, ca. 1940. The Phillips Collection.
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Robert Watts, Xmas Event, 1962.
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Detail from a Christmas card in the collection of Robert E. Jackson.
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'What Josephine said,' explained Robert, 'was simply that it would be pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a Christmas-tree indoors'....
Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the colliery.
'Shall we light them as we fix them,' asked Robert, 'or save them for one grand rocket at the end?'
'Oh, as we do them,' said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers and wanted to see some reward.
A match spluttered. One naked little flame sprang alight among the dark foliage. The candle burned tremulously, naked. They all were silent.
'We ought to do a ritual dance! We ought to worship the tree,' sang Julia, in her high voice.
'Hold on a minute. We'll have a little more illumination,' said Robert.
'Why yes. We want more than one candle,' said Josephine.
But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a pas seul before the tree, looking like an animated bough herself.
Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short, harsh, cackling laugh.
'Aren't we fools! he cried. 'What? Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!'
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On Christmas Eve, we build a fire, then snuff it out with an old wet towel, realizing, fearfully, that we haven’t cleaned the flue in five years. Then the boiler breaks down. We plug in the space heaters. We order takeout Chinese. Only then, when almost all is lost and I am feeling so unexpectedly sad, do I realize what a sucker I am for the beautiful fake Christmas that German-American commerce concocted for us years ago. A boon for the economy and a pernicious sweet for the mind. But it moves me. My heart is a chump. I actually like the shopping, the gift wrap, the carols—even the tinkling store music. I like the invented holiday miracles, the unexpected kindnesses and transformations—at least, as they are portrayed on the TV specials! And, looking out the window and seeing only sleet, I realize that I even like the snow. Where, now, is that lovely perfect Christmas? On whose open fire are those goddam chestnuts roasting? I have a fiction writer’s weakness for fiction. It’s an occupational hazard. A business thing.
Lorrie Moore, "Chop-Suey Xmas."
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Well, why anything? Why do we? Come every year sure as the solstice to carol these antiquities that if you listened to the words would break your heart. Silence, darkness, Jesus, angels. Better, I suppose, to sing than to listen.
John Updike, "The Carol Sing."
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Despite the forecast's promise,
It didn't snow that night;
But in the morning, flakes began
To glide all right.
Not enough to cover roads
Or even hide the grass;
But enough to change the light.
Bernard O'Donoghue, 'Christmas.'
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Making orange peel and clove beeswax candles; a garland of straw stars.
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Merry everything, friends.
