Secular Christmas readings/poems

[songbird]

Hi, two members of our WI are doing a reading at our local carol concert. There will be religious readings but we want something a bit different. It could be funny, inspirational, thought provoking or (preferably) a mix of all three.

I've googled and googled but many of them are smutty funny or over sentimental or full of American references that will be meaningless in a small mid-Wales town!

As there are two of them there could be two shorter readings or a longer one that they will share.

Help!!! Any suggestions very gratefully received

Something from A Child's Christmas in Wales? Dylan Thomas.

As you're in Wales, you've probably already thought of this - but what about a snippet from Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales"?

full text here

e.g. just the last paragraph?
Or a segment such as "For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding ... what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar."
Or this bit: "Years and years ago, when I was a [child], when there were wolves in Wales, a ... white, torn Christmas cards." Though you'd need a confident reader, as the language is so rich!

Hope this post at least bumps your thread so you get more ideas. Best of luck!

I took so long typing that, it ends up as a cross-post!

Something from The Grinch?

I was also going to suggest "A Child's Christmas in Wales". Or a bit of this from Cider with Rosie?

www.christmasgems.co.uk/Cider_with_Rosie.html

Do you mind if I ask where in mid Wales you are? I grew up there!

Ooh thanks guys. I live in Newtown and work in Welshpool wabbit

Something from the Pickwick Papers, e.g. the kiss-fest under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve? Might be too old-fashioned, though.

I grew up in Llanidloes, songbird so know both places very well!

"Secular Christmas"? Great oxymoron!

But what about A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore?
www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171924

PS - Castell Nedd/Llangadog!

I know, the oxymoron made me smile too! Do you mean you're from Neath and/or Llangadog? I did my degree in Carmarthen so am very fond of South Wales too ??

wabbit We LOVE llani, and live out that side of Newtown, so we've been thinking about llani high school for dd in a couple of years.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, they're lovely classic pieces of writing. I have a feeling my ladies will want to go funny but they've given me something to go on. We could even have a go at re-writing 'twas the night before....' With a WI theme (heaven forbid )

The Big Book of Christmas by Gaby Morgan has some funny Christmas poems.

From Neath. Lived in Llangadog for a bit.

I've done readings for a carol concert too, and it's surprisingly hard to find funny/secular pieces. Try U. A. Fanthorpe's Christmas poems, available as a collection eg here

Also, Flora Thomson's 'A Country Calendar' has some wintry bits in it, I recall - or even Lark Rise to Candleford?

There's also a helpful Virago Book of Christmas, which I only discovered afterwards

Thanks nell and halsall

www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/tim_minchin/white_wine_in_the_sun.html I would have to sing it though.

Oh I bloody love that!!

I like 'Christmas Dog' by Shel Silverstein:
Christmas Dog

Tonight's my first night as a watchdog,
And here it is Christmas Eve.
The children are sleeping all cozy upstairs,
While I'm guardin' the stockin's and tree.

What's that now---footsteps on the rooftop?
Could it be a cat or a mouse?
Who's this down the chimney?
A thief with a beard---
And a big sack for robbin' the house?

I'm barkin', I'm growlin', I'm bitin' his butt.
He howls and jumps back in his sleigh.
I scare his strange horses, they leap in the air.
I've frightened the whole bunch away.

Now the house is all peaceful and quiet again.
The stockin's are safe as can be.
Won't the kiddies be glad when they wake up tomorrow
And see how I've guarded the tree.

And this one by Dave Calder

On the thirteenth day of Christmas my true love phoned me up ...
Well, I suppose I should be grateful, you've obviously gone
to a lot of trouble and expense - or maybe off your head.
Yes, I did like the birds - the small ones anyway were fun
if rather messy, but now the hens have roosted on my bed
and the rest are nested on the wardrobe. It's hard to sleep
with all that cooing, let alone the cackling of the geese
whose eggs are everywhere, but mostly in a broken smelly heap on the sofa. No, why should I mind?, I can't get any peace anywhere - the lounge is full of drummers thumping tom-toms and sprawling lords crashed out from manic leaping. The kitchen
is crammed with cows and milkmaids and smells of a million stink-bombs and enough sour milk to last a year. The pipers? I'd forgotten them - they were no trouble, I paid them and they went. But I can't get rid
of these young ladies. They won't stop dancing or turn the music down and they're always in the bathroom, squealing as they skid across the flooded floor. No, I don't need a plumber round,
it's just the swans - where else can they swim? Poor things,
I think they're going mad, like me. When I went to wash my hands one ate the soap, another swallowed the gold rings.
And the pear tree died. Too dry. So thanks for nothing, love. Goodbye.

No more after this one, I promise!
I've got a lovely book of Christmas poems I was given a few years back with all the classics plus lots of funny ones :) (It's edited by Gaby Morgan)

""Secular Christmas"? Great oxymoron!"

Not at all - Most of us in the UK celebrate a secular christmas or indeed a pagan one. I know I do- no jesus in my house.

The clue is in the name though surely? Christ's mass.

I don't see that as particulary significant. Thursday is named after a Roman god but I don't see you bowing to him.
The name of christmas came much after the fesival in an attempt to chhristianise the winter nordic/celtic/pagan festival.

Except it hasn't worked all that well. I support anyone's reason to celebrate christmas, but many of the customs and symbolism at christmas time is far from christian- santa, reindeer, stockings, holly, christmas trees....

It's not suprising that the christian church banned christmas in parts of the UK for 400 years, in Scotland it only became a public holiday in the 1950s, it was a criminal offence to be caught celebrating such a pagan festival.

By all means celebrate christmas in your christian way, but don't suggest that is is a wholly christian festival - because for many of us that is not the case.

There's a hilarious Christmas bit in one of the Molesworth books. Here it is in The Spectator mag from December 2007.

I read this thread in my fruitless search for a reading that I was asked to do at a Carol Concert. Finding something secular and amusing turned out to be more difficult than I thought so I wrote my own. Adding it here just in case anyone else arrives here on a similar quest and makes it this far down the thread.

stash1976.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/celebrations/