Poem of the Month

Advent 1955

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The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It’s dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver-pale.
The world seems traveling into space,
And traveling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound —
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out ‘Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.’
    And how, in fact, do we prepare
For the great day that waits us there —
The twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards. And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know —
They’d sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much.
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.
We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell’d go extremely well.
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax.
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
“The time draws near the birth of Christ’,
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago.
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

Chosen by Lance Pierson, Chairman of The Betjeman Society.

This is a poem for late November and December (the dates of Advent in 2020 are Nov 29 – Dec 24). Advent is the Church’s season leading up to Christmas. Betjeman wrote this poem in November 1955, and read it on Dec 2, on the BBC West of England Home Service radio programme, ‘The Faith in the West’.

It obviously prompts comparison with the better known ‘Christmas’, first published in the magazine ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ eight years earlier in Dec 1947. But it appeared more widely in A Few Late Chrysanthenums in 1954, and was evidently fresh in JB’s mind as well as the public’s. He broadcast it and wrote about it at Christmas 1953 and 1954. Even if he didn’t plan a sequel himself, he must have been asked, ‘What are you going to write about Christmas next year?’

As a poem ‘Advent 1955’ is much less good than ‘Christmas’. He may have knocked it up in a hurry for his next date with the radio. Unlike the earlier poem’s well crafted rhyme-pattern in tight 6-line verses, this has the chatty, person-to-person style of his other ‘Poems in the Porch’ on church themes. The sentences tend to chatter on till he needs to draw breath. It’s fine for a radio broadcast, but works less well when read on the page.

Both poems are contrasting the purely earth-bound celebrations of today’s commercialized Christmas with the sensational claim that ‘God became Man’. ‘Christmas’ reaches that theological climax soon after half-way through the poem and builds up to a terrific emotional punch at the end. ‘Advent 1955’ has a much briefer and quieter dénouement in the last 7 lines. It almost fades away.

So why have I chosen it? Partly because it is so much less famous, and deserves a rare outing. Partly because the satire is sharper and it stings my sore points in a salutary way. The trenchant passage on Christmas cards leads up to the wonderful diagnosis, ‘My pride gone in for advertising’: I fear that is exactly how I have used my annual Christmas newsletter. I don’t think I have ever quite ‘charged against expenses’ the presents I feel I have to give ‘for business reasons’, but it has been a close-run thing. I confess they probably are claimed against tax. Ouch! This poem finds me out.

I even prefer the punch-line to that in ‘Christmas’. I always have to mute its famous last line, ‘And lives today in bread and wine’. Precious words to JB, I’m sure, but they don’t speak for all Christians. I remember Jesus through bread and wine; they symbolize him for me. But I don’t believe he lives in them. I am happier with the gentle hints in the later poem: ‘The Advent bells call out, ‘Prepare … if God had not given so He still would be a distant stranger’. Which is exactly what he is to many people today. One wonders why. This poem speaks to our present condition.