Words for the journey
Philip Gross looks at travelling and the arrival home
On the face of it, if you want a verse for a corporate Christmas card, I’d be the last person to ask. The phrase ‘greetings card verse’ could sum up most things a serious working poet would want not to be.
More than that, I’m a Quaker, and one of our historical particularities is that Quakers don’t set special store by Christmas – not more special, that is, than every other day of the year. I am more than averagely sceptical about 25 December. I am happy to share a sense of deep winter, of the solstice, when the sun begins its journey back, with many faiths and stories – the Norse Yule, Hindu Diwali, Roman Saturnalia to name a few. But Jesus’s birthday? Unlikely, most Biblical scholars would agree… and that’s without the awkward inconsistencies between the New Testament narratives, the ones, that is, that mention it at all. Meanwhile, the massive commercial blackmail modern Christmas exerts on families… Do I need to go on?
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