Merry Christmas Everybody (Song and lyrics)

The ultimate song  about a British Christmas:

Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?
It’s the time that every Santa has a ball
Does he ride a red nosed reindeer?
Does a ton-up on his sleigh?
Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?

So here it is Merry Christmas
Everybody’s having fun
Look to the future now
It’s only just begun.

Are you waiting for the family to arrive?
Are you sure you got the room to spare inside?
Does your granny always tell ya
That the old songs are the best
Then she’s up and rock and rollin’ with the rest?

So here it is Merry Christmas
Everybody’s having fun
Look to the future now
It’s only just begun.

What will your daddy do when he sees
Your mama kissin’ Santa Claus
Ah ah

Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?
Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall
Do you ride on down the hillside
In a buggy you have made?
When you land upon your head
Then you bin slayed.

So here it is Merry Christmas
Everybody’s having fun
Look to the future now
It’s only just begun.

IT’S CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITSMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!!!!!

With love to Noddy Holder and Slade, for my favourite Christmas song (although for my sons, The Beach Boys Christmas Album reigns supreme, and we always play it when decorating the tree).

 

Friday Poem: The House of Christmas

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

by G. K. Chesterton

Peering into the Kitchen

It’s Christmas Eve and the kitchen is a mess
everything crusted with flour as more pastry is made
because someone has eaten all the mince pies already.

The jelly stuffed full of Rum soaked sponges has finally set
providing a foundation for our Christmas Trifle
and the Christmas Cake has been iced
with red rocketships rather than holly.

Meanwhile someone is melting dark chocolate
to make a Yule Log the way Grandad used to
and not looking guilty at all.

I smile and close the door on my adult sons as
their chocolate fuelled laughter resounds in my ears.
Christmas is finally here!

Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond

This poem appeared yesterday on Sarah Connors Advent Calendar, but I couldn’t help but blog it again today, as it is about our own little Christmas Eve tradition.

Many years ago, I would leave the bulk of the Christmas baking until Christmas Eve, and have an all day marathon with my two little boys. By the time Daddy came home from work, they were happy and above all tired. Not over excited at all, so sleep came easy to them and Father Christmas could drink his Calvados, eat his mince pie and fill those stockings.

The mess is a family joke –when they were young, somehow the house on Christmas Eve was littered with floury handprints…

As they grew up, the lads decided to do all the baking (and a lot of eating) on thier own. They make the Christmas Cake (a traditional fruit cake), mince pies, a chocolate Yule Log cake, and a Trifle. And yes, extra batches of pies are made, as the first batch always vanishes.

They cook the main meal on Christmas Day too, so we are very lucky parents!

Day 13: Christmas Cheer

Another fine poem from Jim Feeney posted as part of Sarah’s Advent Calendar. Enjoy……

Sarah writes poems

Your cell phone rings
but you’re not listening
because you left it
in The Fox and Vixen
behind the cistern
in the last stall on the left
next to the condom machine
and now it’s 4 am
your wife sleeps soundly beside you,
in the corner of the room
your hangover squats
sorting a tray of instruments.

It all began with a few beers,
some Christmas Cheer
so how did it get
from there to here?

Slowly you remember or think you remember….

Did you really poke your boss in the chest
and tell him that you know better
that you know best?

Did you really down three shots of scotch
grab Mark from marketing by the shoulders
and proclaim “I love you bro”
over and over ‘till he begged you to stop
to let go?

And why, why, why
did you call that shy Dutch girl from accounting
“sad-eyed…

View original post 199 more words

Poetry Advent Calendar!

The clever and enterprising Sarah (https://fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com/) has created a poetry Advent Calendar.

Simply go to https://adventmyfriend.com/101755/da6c0e0a61/, and click on a number. You will see a photo and a link to the poem of the day.

It’s a great way to discover some new poets.

Enjoy!!!

(and a poem of mine is in there too!!)

Friday Poem: Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

By T S Eliot

Robin in the fig tree

What are the words?
Bright, cheery red, bob-bob-bobbing?
My Robin has read Ted Hughes
He pulls worms fighting from the stiff soil
Terrorises chickens, birds a hundred times his size
Fights to the death for territory
He is now lurking in our small unproductive Fig tree
That leans awkwardly out of a fake ceramic tub
The pigeons by the pond look uneasy

Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond

re-blogged from 2016…… a sort of Christmassy poem……

Robin in the fig tree

Robin in the fig tree

What are the words?
Bright, cheery red, bob-bob-bobbing?
My Robin has read Ted Hughes
He pulls worms fighting from the stiff soil
Terrorises chickens, birds a hundred times his size
Fights to the death for territory
He is now lurking in our small unproductive Fig tree
That leans awkwardly out of a fake ceramic tub
The pigeons by the pond look uneasy

Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond