I read this famous poem1 and think of Ukrainian soldiers and refugees: “A cold coming we had of it, | Just the worst time of the year.” “The Journey of the Magi” tells the story of the three wise kings following a star to bring gifts to the baby Jesus. The day of their arrival in Bethelem, January 6th, is celebrated as Epiphany and is also the Russian Orthodox Christmas. Ukrainians, however, are beginning to shift their Christmas celebration to December 25th, to conform to European practice. The Ukrainians have an amazing array of traditional Christmas dishes, by the way: plant-based, symbolic (like the dishes served at a Seder and Hanukkah), and delicious sounding. I’ll be trying them in the New Year.
See what you think of this Christmas poem, first published in 1927, about the time T. S. Eliot was baptized into the Church of England.
The Journey of The Magi
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Far more uplifting is a Bible passage from the book of Luke, telling the story of how shepherds, watching their flocks by night, learned about the birth of Jesus:
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.2
On earth peace, good will toward all!
This photo shows the white hearts I put on our Christmas trees in 2012 in memory of the children who died at the hands of a young gunman at Newtown, not far from Great Barrington. This week’s article by the mayor of San Jose, CA, “400 Million Guns Aren’t Going to Just Go Away. In San Jose, We’re Trying Something New,” made me hopeful because as well as action in Washington there are practical local initiatives underway to control a uniquely American madness.
I looked up “The Journey of the Magi” because it is supposedly the poem that enchanted a 14-year-old school girl in 1939 and made her determined to “get to” the poet, T. S. Eliot. It’s more likely in my view that she was enchanted by John Gielgud’s voice, or by the poem on the other side of the vinyl record, the smoky, sexy, grim and gritty “Preludes” - which she later suggested to Andrew Lloyd Webber, who made it part of the song “Memory.”
This is from the King James Version. Other translations are less appealing to a nonbeliever. For example, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among people with whom He is pleased.”