Earth grown old, yet still so green,
Deep beneath her crust of cold
Nurses fire unfelt, unseen:
Earth grown old.
John Betjman’s “Advent 1955” rhymes “gale” with “pale”:
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver-pale.
T. S. Eliot’s Advent poem, “Journey of the Magi,” opens with the line:
“A cold night we had of it.”
The absence of Christmas warmth in these works is not simply a function of the fact that Advent and late autumn coincide on the calendar. After all, Christmas occurs in winter-proper, and it is wrapped in metaphors of warmth: hearths, steaming punch, roasted chestnuts and hot gravy on turkey.
This tendency to chill Advent poems is more than a necessity of the weather. It is a poetic plea not to confuse Advent and Christmas. Or rather it is a plea to allow Advent to lead us into the warmth of Christmas by way of cold and long expectation — the expectation both of Israel and of The Church awaiting the Messiah as strangers in a strange land.
The poetry of Advent is not warm or jolly. Waiting is rarely warm or jolly. But it is hopeful, and if Advent cannot warm, it can help us to understand, by contrast, what the incarnate warmth of Christmas means. It helps us to know and to experience in a small way the contrast between the God of Job who speaks out of the whirlwind and says he has “entered into the treasures of the snow” and the infant God of Luke who lies on a woman’s chest, sharing her body heat.
Assistant Professor of English