Christmas Every Week: Kellett's Christmas
Dr Arnold Kellett was born in Wibsey, near Bradford, but since 1956 has been associated with Knaresborough, where he was formerly head of modern languages at King James School. He has twice been the town's mayor, and became its first Honorary Citizen in 1996.
Dr Kellett is well known as both a local historian and Methodist lay preacher. He is a popular speaker and writer on Yorkshire dialect.
He has written a number of books, one of which, Kellett's Christmas contains a hundred Christmas poems.
Open Writing is privileged to bring those poems to our readers. And because Christmas has a year-long, millenia-long significance, we will bring you a Christmas poem every week for the next two years.
Today Arnold introduces a revised version of his book.
This is an updated and greatly-extended version of the anthology published in 1988 by Foundery Press, which the publishers called Kellett's Christmas. I have decided to keep the title, partly because it is nicely alliterative, and partly because what follows does indeed represent my view of Christmas.
Before you read any of it, though, I would like to clear up possible misunderstandings. First, please don't imagine that I ever sat down to write a book consisting of a hundred poems on Christmas! It is simply that over a period of about forty years it has been my custom to celebrate each Christmas by writing a poem or two - and this is the resulting total. Many appeared in print for the first time in the Methodist Recorder, others in magazines such as The Dalesman, and many have been read at Christmas services and entertainments all over the country and abroad.
But how on earth could one person write a hundred poems all on the same topic? Well, I find the subject inexhaustible. Christmas is such a complex and colourful amalgam of history, theology and folklore, and has evolved into such a vast, international beanfeast, with all kinds of sociological and commercial overtones. There is always something new to be said about it, no end of changes to be rung on the old Christmas bells.
In these poems I have generally used rhyme rather than blank or free verse, because this, I think, is what most people prefer. Above all, I have aimed at being understood. The problem with so much modern verse is that it is too difficult and obscure, sometimes deliberately so, as though poets, by muddying the water, can make it seem deeper.
Another possible misunderstanding arises from the fact that many of these could be seen as protest poems ... I love Christmas! With all its faults and failings I still enter into it with an unbounded enthusiasm undiminished by the passing years. In particular, I love the romantic atmosphere that can be generated by the surviving mid-winter customs of our pre-Christian forefathers - the Celtic mistletoe, the Roman Saturnalia, the Yule-tide of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. I also treasure our little family customs, such as still setting up the Nativity scene I made for our first child - on top of the TV set, to show what should have priority!
Even so, the mainspring of much of this verse is a sense of the scandal of Christmas, which I consider to be two-fold. First, the way so many manage to celebrate the birth of Christ without giving him a serious thought. The sour-faced old Puritan in one of my poems, so scandalised by this reversion to paganism that he tried to abolish Christmas, went to ridiculous extremes. The art of keeping Christmas is to get the balance right between pagan mid-winter revelry and the spiritual rejoicing which comes from an understanding of who Jesus was.
As I see it, when Jesus was born it was as though the Author of the whole human drama, long hidden behind the scenes, had stepped out on to the stage of history. Jesus is, according to the New Testament, 'the image of the invisible God', the one who came to bring us fullness of life, both in this world and in the next. This is what we are supposed to be celebrating! It is nothing less than the Eternal Word becoming flesh and blood, living amongst us.
Secondly, there is the scandal of those who celebrate the birth of Jesus - of all people - by extravagant self-indulgence. What irony is here! Have we forgotten that Mary said in her pre-natal meditation: 'He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away'? The Puritans were wrong. There's every reason to eat, drink and be merry at Christmas. But to do this in the name of Christ, and at the same time remain indifferent to the needs of the poor, the hungry, the sick and the suffering, is a mockery. True, there is often at Christmas a remarkable, if short-lived, outpouring of compassion and generosity. Yet we do well to ask ourselves: what have we given to those in need compared with what we spend on ourselves, our families and friends?
So this is another theme - the crying need for money to be given to worthy causes. Previous sales of these poems have raised considerable sums for the Save the Children Fund and for land-mine victims. All author's royalties from this edition will go to The Methodist Relief and Development Fund. What the author hopes, however, is not only to raise money but to encourage continuing support for this and other relief organisations - all inspired by some new insight into the meaning of the comingt of Christ.
Happy Christmas!
Arnold Kellett
Knaresborough
North Yorkshire
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Was Robert Louis Stevenson right?
Better to travel hopefully
Than to arrive?
Is the pleasure all here
In anticipation,
In imagination,
In our expectation
Of how good it will be?
Advent is preparing ...
Not shopping-days only,
Not spending on stomachs,
But clearing the mind,
And opening the heart
In readiness for something deeper
Than social fun and family reunion:
All may travel hopefully,
But only those who go as far as Bethlehem
Shall find arrival better than journey.
