Yuletide Traditions – A Poetic Celebration By Penelope Shuttle!

Yule

On the tall green tree we have hung
the little golden masks of Bacchus,
the many little grins glinting and sparkling,
‘oscilla ex alta suspendent mollia pinu’,
waving amulets from the tall pine,
as did the roman soldiers, revering
‘the cedar in its bravery’,
the sacred, ever-green, ever-living pole,
recalling in winter dark that other deathless tree
whose roots are deep in little-hell,
whose highest boughs uphold great heaven.
Sweet resins fill the house,
atop the tree stands Frau Sonne, shining one…
And here on the table is our Christmas cake,
‘geologically sound, with one stratum of icing,
and one of marzipan, the whole superimposed
on alluvial darkness’, and ‘the vast globe
of plum-pudding, the true image of the earth,
flattened at the poles’, from which the flame leaps,
as it leaps along the log of yule
by whose light we watch the year’s wheel turn.
Now from the popped and plundered
red and golden paper crackers, we eagerly unfold
and don our Saturnalian hats of crepe
and beneath the luminous Kissing Bough
of mistletoe and woven green bay,
we kiss in a pre-Copernican way;
the sun moves, not us, not our earth!
We beg her to live again, arise from her winter death!
All the multitude of Bacchus’ golden lips
move in smiling silent supplication.
Here is your tree, here are your children, Reine Soleil,
give us your gifts…

Penelope Shuttle (1947 – ) from Building A City For Jamie, Oxford University Press, 1996

What a wonderful poetic salute to the ages-old traditions of Yule Time where many of our cherished Christmas traditions, including the Christmas tree, originated. I was so pleased to find this evocation of the so-called secular moments of Christmas that I take for granted as being part of Christmas and don’t think of where they came from. But I also appreciate how English poet Penelope Shuttle doesn’t abandon the religious significance of Christmas which can disappear so easily under the onslaught of consumerism:

the sacred, ever-green, ever-living pole,
recalling in winter dark that other deathless tree
whose roots are deep in little-hell,
whose highest boughs uphold great heaven.

Penelope Shuttle may not be a household name especially here in North America but she is celebrated in her native England. Her tenth poetry collection, Unsent: New and Selected Poems 1980 – 2012, was released in 2012. To read the review in the Guardian by Sean O’Brien click here.

I first came across through Shuttle through Jeanette Winterson’s website years ago where she features her favorite poems. To read Shuttle’s poem Taxing the Rain, featured by Winterson, click here

Shuttle’s command of poetic craft is so evident in this poem but especially in these lines:

Now from the popped and plundered
red and golden paper crackers, we eagerly unfold
and don our Saturnalian hats of crepe
and beneath the luminous Kissing Bough
of mistletoe and woven green bay,
we kiss in a pre-Copernican way;
the sun moves, not us, not our earth!

Not many poets could  throw in words like Saturnalian and Copernician within seven lines and do it without a rhythmic hiccup! And what a surprising way she turns a cliché on its head and gives us: we kiss in a pre-Copernican way; the sun moves, not us, not our earth!

This poem comes as a great Christmas gift! A celebration of thousands of years of history and traditions compressed into a few exquisite musical lines. A Bacchanalian feast of words!