Poem: "Song to be Sung with an Eggnog in One Hand and a String of Colored Lights in the Other" by Phyllis McGinley

Whatever’s got into Christmas?
It happens so often now.
When I was six or a little bit more,
Though we popped the corn and we dressed the door,
Though we trimmed the spicy bough,
This festive morn, this midnight clear,
They only enveloped us once a year.
While now, as the world and I grow older,
Christmas keeps peeping round my shoulder.

When I was seven or maybe eight,
The year crawled past like a snowbound freight.
Centuries yawned, I well remember,
Between December and the next December.

But now I’m a grown-up more or less,
The Yule pulls in like a fast express.
St. Nick’s forever cutting a caper.
I’m always knee-deep in tissue paper.

Wherever I look, whenever I listen,
The joy-bells ring and the gift-cards glisten.
While last year’s candles are still aglow,
I’m kissed under this year’s mistletoe.

Noel has bound me in chains and fetters.
Just as I’m starting my thank-you letters,
The carols begin and a crooner hummeth
And lo! the sedulous mailman cometh.

Ah, twelve were the days of Christmas,
But that was a long time back.
For now so swiftly do they arrive
It’s more like three hundred sixty-five

In my personal almanac.
And somehow my joie de vivre gets drowsy
With everything always so Wenceslausy.
I might love Christmas
A bushel and a peck,
Would it only stop breathing down my neck.