Christmas 2018: A Carol for Children

For the sixth Christmas in the history of RINOcracy.com, Ogden Nash’s 1935 poem, “A Carol for Children,” once again seems fitting. As many will recall, Nash’s poem is not a “merry” one at all, and the tradition of publishing it is one that I would like to find reason to discontinue. Last year, Christmas came amid escalating hostility between the United States and North Korea and a humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The year, the tension with North Korea has abated, for at least the time being, but the crisis in Yemen has only grown worse, and lethal conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan continue. At home, political divisions have become evermore bitter, while desperate seekers of asylum throng to our Southern border.

Yet despite its tone of melancholy, and even despair, Nash’s poem concludes on a note of hope for a better world for our children and generations to come. It is that note of hope readers are encouraged to take from it. Our need for the lift of the Christmas spirit has seldom been greater.

A Carol for Children

God rest you, merry Innocents,
Let nothing you dismay,
Let nothing wound an eager heart
Upon this Christmas Day.

Yours be the genial holly wreaths,
The stockings and the tree;
An aged world to you bequeaths
Its own forgotten glee.

Soon, soon enough come crueler gifts,
The anger and the tears;
Between you now there sparsely drifts
A handful yet of years.

Oh dimly, dimly glows the star
Through the electric throng;
The bidding in temple and bazaar
Drowns out the silver song.

The ancient altar smokes afresh,
The ancient idols stir;
Faint in the reek of burning flesh
Sink frankincense and myrrh.

Gaspar, Balthasar, Melchior!
Where are your offerings now?
What greetings to the Prince of War,
His darkly branded brow?

Two ultimate laws alone we know,
The ledger and the sword –
So far away, so long ago,
We lost the infant Lord.

Only the children clasp his hand;
His voice speaks low to them,
And still for them the shining band
Wings over Bethlehem.

God rest you, merry Innocents,
While innocence endures.
A sweeter Christmas than we to ours
May you bequeath to yours.

* * * *

While Christmas is a uniquely special day for Christians, the values it proclaims—peace, love and reconciliation—are not the exclusive province of one religion or indeed of all religions. Thus, one hopes that believers and non-believers alike might embrace the Christmas spirit and celebrate the occasion in a way that is meaningful to each.