Unless you’re the Grinch, we’re pretty sure that this beautiful poem will put you in a festive mood! Just sit back, relax and listen to it with a hot mug of cocoa.
Click here to read more about the poem’s meaning
This poem gives us simple instructions to follow to ensure that we have a good Christmas. The first item on Cope’s list is the tree (a “Norwegian spruce”). She also wants winter flowers (“hyacinths” and “winter jasmine”), with their closed flowers (“buds”) promising new life. Next come the decorations (“things that shine”). Then she invites us to share our “memories of Christmas past”, and our sadness (“tears”). The last section has a more religious tone, with the shepherd boy and the animals (“ox and ass”) from the Bible story, perhaps as figures in a traditional crib scene. Cope brings all her ideas together in the last two lines, combining “hope and love and light” in her Christmas wishes.
Click here to open the transcript
“The Christmas life”
by Wendy Cope
Bring in a tree, a young Norwegian spruceFichtespruce,
Bring hyacinthHyazinthehyacinths that rooted in the cold.
Bring winter jasmine as its budKnospebuds to unfoldsich entfaltenunfold —
Bring the Christmas life into this house.
~
Bring red and green and gold, bring things that shine,
Bring candlestickKerzenständercandlesticks and music, food and wine.
Bring in your memories of Christmas past.
Bring in your tears for all that you have lost.
~
Bring in the shepherd boyHirtenjungeshepherd boy, the oxOchseox and asshier: Eselass,
Bring in the stillness of an icy night,
Bring in a birth, of hope and love and light.
Bring the Christmas life into this house.