Holiday Stories - We 3 "Hip" 'OK' Kings

Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is correspondingly rich for children of all ages, in school and at home, the best lyrics, carols, essays, plays and stories of Christmas, its heritage and holiday travels.

Nora Archibald Smith

Deep in the shelter of the cave,

The ass with drooping head

Stood weary in the shadow, where

His master’s hand had led.

About the manger oxen lay,

Bending a wide-eyed gaze

Upon the little new-born Babe,

Half worship, half amaze.

High in the roof the doves were set,

And cooed there, soft and mild,

Yet not so sweet as, in the hay,

The Mother to her Child.

The gentle cows breathed fragrant breath

To keep Babe Jesus warm,

While loud and clear, o’er hill and dale,

The cocks crowed, “Christ is born I”

Out in the fields, beneath the stars,

The young lambs sleeping lay,

And dreamed that in the manger slept

Another white as they.

These were Thy neighbors, Christmas Child;

To Thee their love was given,

For in Thy baby face there shone

The wonder-light of Heaven.

James S. Park

So crowded was the little town

On the first Christmas day,

Tired Mary Mother laid her down,

To rest upon the hay.

(Ah, would my door might have been thrown,

Wide open on her way!)

But when the Holy Babe was born,

In the deep hush of night,

It seemed as if a Sabbath morn,

Had come with sacred light.

Child Jesus made the place forlorn

With his own beauty bright.

The manger rough was all his rest;

The cattle, having fed,

Stood silent by, or closer pressed,

And gravely wondered.

(Ah, Lord, if only that my breast

Had cradled Thee instead!)

Mary Austin

Oh, the Shepherds in Judea,
They are pacing to and fro,
For the air grows chill at twilight
And the weanling lambs are slow!

Leave, 0 lambs, the dripping sedges, quit the bramble and the brier,
Leave the fields of barley stubble, for we light the watching fire;
Twinkling fires across the twilight, and a bitter watch to keep,
Lest the prowlers come a-thieving where the flocks unguarded sleep.

Oh, the Shepherds in Judea,
They are singing soft and low -
Song the blessed angels taught them
All the centuries ago!

There was never roof to hide them, there were never walls to bind;
Stark they lie beneath the star-beams, whom the blessed angels find,
With the huddled flocks upstarting, wondering if they hear aright,
While the Kings come riding, riding, solemn shadows in the night.

Oh, the Shepherds in Judea,
They are thinking, as they go,
Of the light that broke their watching
On the hillside in the snow! -

Scattered snow along the hillside, white as springtime fleeces are,
With the whiter wings above them and the glory-streaming star -
Guiding-star across the housetops; never fear the Shepherds felt
Till they found the Babe in manger where the kindly cattle knelt.

Oh, the Shepherds in Judea! -
Do you think the Shepherds know
How the whole round earth is brightened
In the ruddy Christmas glow?

How the sighs are lost in laughter, and the laughter brings the tears,
As the thoughts of men go seeking back across the darkling years
Till they find the wayside stable that the star-led Wise Men found,
With the Shepherds, mute, adoring, and the glory shining round!

Margaret Deland

Like small curled feathers, white and soft,
The little clouds went by,
Across the moon, and past the stars,
And down the western sky:
In upland pastures, where the grass
With frosted dew was white,
Like snowy clouds the young sheep lay,
That first, best Christmas night.
The shepherds slept; and, glimmering faint,
With twist of thin, blue smoke,
Only their fire’s crackling flames
The tender silence broke-
Save when a young lamb raised his head,
Or, when the night wind blew,
A nesting bird would softly stir,
Where dusky olives grew-
With finger on her solemn lip,
Night hushed the shadowy earth,
And only stars and angels saw
The little Saviour’s birth;
Then came such flash of silver light
Across the bending skies,
The wondering shepherds woke, and hid
Their frightened, dazzled eyes I
And all their gentle sleepy flock
Looked up, then slept again,
Nor knew the light that dimmed the stars
Brought endless Peace to men-
Nor even heard the gracious words
That down the ages ring
The Christ is born! the Lord has come,
Good-will on earth to bring! ”
Then o’er the moonlit, misty fields,
Dumb with the world’s great joy,
The shepherds sought the white-walled town,
Where lay the baby boy-
And oh, the gladness of the world,
The glory of the skies,
Because the longed-for Christ looked up
In Mary’s happy eyes!

William Drummond, of Hawthornden

O than the fairest day, thrice fairer night!
Night to blest days in which a sun doth rise
Of which that golden eye which clears the skies

Is but a sparkling ray, a shadow-light!
And blessed ye, in silly pastor’s sight,
Mild creatures, in whose warm crib now lies

That heaven-sent youngling, holy-maid-born wight,
Midst, end, beginning of our prophecies!

Blest cottage that hath flowers in winter spread,
Though withered - blessed grass that hath the grace
To deck and be a carpet to that place!

Thus sang, unto the sounds of oaten reed,
Before the Babe, the shepherds bowed on knees;
And springs ran nectar, honey dropped from trees.

Kate Douglas Wiggin

When the Child of Nazareth was born, the sun, according to the Bosnian legend, “leaped in the heavens, and the stars around it danced. A peace came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and healthy on the green hill-side. The grass was beflowered with open blossoms, incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, birds sang on the mountain top, and all gave thanks to the great God.”

It is naught but an old folk-tale, but it has truth hidden at its heart, for a strange, subtle force, a spirit of genial good-will, a new-born kindness, seem to animate child and man alike when the world pays its tribute to the” heavensent youngling,” as the poet Drummond calls the infant Christ.

When the Three Wise Men rode from the East into the West on that “first, best Christmas night,” they bore on their saddle-bows three caskets filled with gold and frankincense and myrrh, to be laid at the feet of the manger-cradled babe of Bethlehem. Beginning with this old, old journey, the spirit of giving crept into the world’s heart. As the Magi came bearing gifts, so do we also; gifts that relieve want, gifts that are sweet and fragrant with friendship, gifts that breathe love, gifts that mean service, gifts inspired still by the star that shone over the City of David nearly two thousand years ago.

Then hang the green coronet of the Christmas-tree with glittering baubles and jewels of flame; heap offerings on ‘its emerald branches; bring the Yule log to the firing; deck the house with holly and mistletoe,

“And all the bells on earth shall ring On Christmas day in the morning.”