It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I wrote the poem below in 2002 and added it to my Web site, along with a description of its origin. Posting this is a more-or-less annual tradition here. The poem is really about the frantic Christmas shopping season. In posting this on Christmas Eve, I pray that you are finished with shopping, wrapping, etc., and still have enough energy to enjoy the actual Christmas celebration.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
by Lionel Deimel

The jingle bells are back,

Ringing jingle-jangle ding-dong-ding

On the street corners and at the mall,

Where the giant Damoclean snowflakes

Hang menacingly from the store ceilings

Over the heads of the make-up consultants,

Displaying their perfect faces, Santa Claus hats,

And belligerent helpfulness.

The colored outdoor lights are back,

Contending with high-pressure, sodium streetlamps

To banish night and veil the pallid twinkle of the stars,

Letting the phosphor-white icicles,

Dripping electrically from the eaves,

Highlight the unnatural landscape

Of rotund, glow-from-within snowmen

And teams of gene-damaged reindeer.

The entertainments are back—

The last-minute, Oscar-hopeful blockbusters

Playing beside cheap trifles luring the momentarily vulnerable;

Pick-up-choir, stumbling-through-the-notes Messiahs

Competing with earnest Amahls and Peanuts Specials;

The cute-but-clumsy, tiny ballerinas tripping through Nutcrackers

Sorely in need of crowd control;

And the latest made-for-TV, hanky-wrenching, feel-good melodrama.

The emotions are back,

With love-thy-neighbor, brotherhood-of-man yearnings

Schizophrenically vying with loathing for the driver ahead,

As we pursue our private quests

For perfect love-showing, obligation-meeting, or indifference-disguising gifts,

Our anticipating the giving-terror, receiving-embarrassment,

The disappointing joy, and the exhilarating letdown assuring us at last

That Christmas is upon us.