{"id":24,"date":"2007-12-17T13:47:25","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T12:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=24"},"modified":"2009-07-12T17:46:01","modified_gmt":"2009-07-12T17:46:01","slug":"happy-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"Happy Christmas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

At one time, it seemed to be the job of the Head of English to select something modern to accompany the traditional readings at the school Carol Service. T S Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ was a common, if not necessarily popular, choice. In my classroom, I preferred Charles Causley’s more accessible (and more amusing) \u2018Ballad of the Bread Man\u2019, with its arresting opening:
\n\"Baby
\nMary stood in the kitchen
\nBaking a loaf of bread.
\nAn angel flew in the window
\n‘We’ve a job for you,’ he said.<\/p>\n

U A Fanthorpe’s enjoyable Christmas sequence, including ‘Cat in the Manger’ and ‘The Wicked Fairy’, has a similar tone. Her Christmas Poems<\/a>\"\" are well-worth seeking out.<\/p>\n

John Betjeman’s ‘Christmas’ was another favourite; it must be an English trait to treat this central Christian festival in such a low key, ironic manner before hinting at belief. There is, of course, a long traditional of Christmas verse in English, including Christina Rossetti’s ‘Christmas Carol’ (\u2018In the bleak mid-winter\u2019), which has become so well-known as, well, a Christmas carol, that it’s easy to forget it’s not traditional. More on the Christmas page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your own favourite Christmas reading, for the classroom or comfortably by the fireside? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s your own favourite Christmas reading?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}