Good King Wenceslas last looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel.
Christmas Carol

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.
Christmas Carol

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
Robert Burns

The gardening season officially begins on January 1st, and ends on December 31.
Marie Huston

From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens -
the garden outdoors,
the garden of pots and bowls in the house,
and the garden of the mind’s eye.
Katherine S. White

The Lord of Misrule – December 17th. This is the first day of the Roman festival Saturnalia. It was a period of great
feasting and festivity, with a lot of drinking and eating. Slaves would become masters for the festival, and everything
was turned upside down. This part of the Roman festival survived into the 17th Century.
Customs and Folktales for December

I was surprised my quilt and pillow were cold,
I see that now the window’s bright again.
Deep in the night, I know the snow is thick,
I sometimes hear the sound as bamboo snaps.
BaiJuyi, Night Snow

Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red reather on the wind.
Ted Kooser, Year’s End

O cruel cloudless space,
And pale bare ground where the poor infant lies!
Why do we feel restored
As in a sacramental place?
Here Mystery is artifice,
And here a vision of such peace is stored,
Healing flows from it through our eyes.
May Sarton, Nativity

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

Just as a dancer, turning and turning,
may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl
of her flying skirts, our weeping willow —
now old and broken , creaking in the breeze —
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun,
sweeping the rusty roof of the barn
with the pale blue lacework of her shadow.
Ted Kooser, Winter Morning Walks

Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour,
crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come
to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than
any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this
state, and your jaws are the cider-press.
Henry David Thoreau, Wild Apples, 1892

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,

And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year you shall not die.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Death of the Old Year

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat.
Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny, a half penny will do.
If you haven’t got a half penny, then God bless you.
Traditional English Christmas rhyme

Shivering–
grey clouds darken
mountain snow.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

This is what I have heard
at last the wind in December
lashing the old trees with rain
unseen rain racing along the tiles
under the moon
wind rising and falling
wind with many clouds
trees in the night wind.
W. S. Merwin

Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An’ I’ll put soul in my Thanksgivin’ prayers.
Edgar A. Guest, Thanksgiving

The autumn air is clear,
The autumn moon is bright.
Fallen leaves gather and scatter,
The jackdaw perches and starts anew.
We think of each other- when will we meet?
This hour, this night, my feelings are hard.
Li Bai, Autumn Air

How bittersweet it is, on winter’s night,
To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire,
As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,
Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
Charles Baudelaire, The Cracked Bell

A full moon shines
over the morning frost;
the lanes are full of late-fallen leaves;
walking across the mulch
is almost as tricky
as treading over ice.

In town the carol-singers are in
crowding the shopping-mall,
while a group of muffled musicians
play by the outside market.

This year but two robins
on the early Christmas cards;
the squirrel still runs along the fence
skirting our newly-erected shed.
Gerald England, Mid-December, Famous Poets

Lighting one candle
from another -
Winter night
Buson

The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown in this season.
A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley.
It’s warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns.
A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees.
Dark redwoods, transparent pale-leved birches.
In their delicate network, a sliver of the moon.
I describe this for I have learned to doubt philosophy
And the visible world is all that remains.
Czeslaw Milosz, December 1st

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.
William Shakespeare

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro’me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Fragment 3

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is grey
I went for a walk
On a winter’s day
I’d be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day.
Mammas and Pappas, California Dreamin

While snow the window-panes bedim,
The fire curls up a sunny charm,
Where, creaming o’er the pitcher’s rim,
The flowering ale is set to warm;
Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,
Sits there, its pleasures to impart,
And children, ‘tween their parent’s knees,
Sing scraps of carols o’er by heart.
John Clare, December

On a frosty morning I went out
And a handkerchief faced me on a bush.
I reach to put it in my pocket,
But it slid from me for it was frozen.
No living cloth jumped from my grasp
But a thing that died last night on a bush,
And I went searching in my mind
Till I found its real equivalent:
The day I kissed a woman of my kindred
And she in the coffin, frozen, stretched.
Sean Ó Riordáin

Bitter cold
autumn wind -
shivering lips.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ring Out, Wild Bells

Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul,
With a corncob pipe and a button nose
and two eyes made out of coal.
Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale, they say,
He was made of snow but the children
know how he came to life one day.
Christmas Carol

Christmas is a time of little time.
How we get there is a mystery.
Racing madly mall-to-mall, we climb
Into fields of sunlit harmony.
Shopping, cooking, clearing walks and yards,
Trimming house and tree while working, too;
Making phone calls, wrapping, writing cards,
As all worn out we do what we must do
So that this day of joy might joy renew.
Nicholas Gordon

I have often thought, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the Middle of Winter.
Joseph Addison

The snow is lying very deep.
My house is sheltered from the blast.
I hear each muffled step outside,
I hear each voice go past.
But I’ll not venture in the drift
Out of this bright security,
Till enough footsteps come and go
To make a path for me.
Agnes Lee

The birth of the Persian hero and sun-god Mithra was celebrated on December 25th. The myth tells that he sprang up full-grown from a rock, armed with a knife and carrying a torch. Shepherds watched his miraculous appearance and hurried to greet him with their first fruits and their flocks and their harvests. His cult spread throughout Roman lands during the 2nd century. In 274, the Emperor Aurelian declared December 25th the Birthday of Sol Invictus (the Unconquerable Sun) in Rome.
Christmas Even and Day

A tule fog
fills the sky–
Yuletide.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

Yule, is when the dark half of the year relinquishes to the light half. Starting the next morning at sunrise, the sun climbs just a little higher and stays a little longer in the sky each day. Known as Solstice Night, or the longest night of the year, much celebration was to be had as the ancestors awaited the rebirth of the Oak King, the Sun King, the Giver of Life that warmed the frozen Earth and made her to bear forth from seeds protected through the fall and winter in her womb. Bonfires were lit in the fields, and crops and trees were wassailed with toasts of spiced cider.
Yule Lore

God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
J. M. Barrie

May you have the gladness of Christmas which is hope;
The spirit of Christmas which is peace;
The heart of Christmas which is love.
Ada V. Hendricks

The Holly King, represents the Death aspect of the God at this time of year; and the Oak King, represents the opposite aspect of Rebirth (these roles are reversed at Midsummer). This can be likened to the Divine Child’s birth. The myth of the Holly King/Oak King probably originated from the Druids to whom these two trees were highly sacred. The Oak King (God of the Waxing Year) kills the Holly King (God of the Waning Year) at Yule (the Winter Solstice). The Oak King then reigns supreme until Litha (the Summer Solstice) when the two battle again, this time with the Holly King victorious. Examples of the Holly King’s image can be seen in our modern Santa Claus.
Yule and Its Lore

December fog -
among the yellow leaves
a dead frog.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

A thousand hills, but no birds in flight,
Ten thousand paths, with no person’s tracks.
A lonely boat, a straw-hatted old man,
Fishing alone in the cold river snow.
Liu Zhongyuan, River Snow

Earth, mountains, rivers – hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness – earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There’s no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
Saisho

Holly and mistletoe
Candles and bells,
I know the message
That each of you tells.
Leland B. Jacobs, Mrs. Ritters First Grade Critters

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man
the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
Charles Dickens

A full moon hangs high in the chilly sky,
All say it’s the same everywhere, round and bright.
But how can one be sure thousands of li away
Wind and perhaps rain may not be marring the night?
Li Qiao, The Mid-Autumn Moon

Every year at just this time,
In cold and dark December,
Families around the world
All gather to remember,
With presents and with parties,
With feasting and with fun,
Customs and traditions
for people old and young.
Helen H. Moore

On the first day of winter,
the earth awakens to the cold touch of itself.
Snow knows no other recourse except
this falling, this sudden letting go
over the small gnomed bushes, all the emptying trees.
Snow puts beauty back into the withered and malnourished,
into the death-wish of nature and the deliberate way
winter insists on nothing less than deference.
waiting all its life, snow says, Let me cover you.
Laura Lush, The First Day of Winter

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly, I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow sorrow for the lost Leonore –
For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore –
Nameless here for evermore.
Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, The Raven

December is the twelfth and final month of the Gregorian calendar and the first month of winter. It derives it’s name from the Latin word decem, meaning ten, as December was the tenth month of the oldest Roman calendar. The Latin name is derived from Decima, the middle Goddess of the Three Fates who personifies the present.
Daily Lore: December

Love awoke one winter’s night
And wander’d through the snowbound land,
And calling to beasts and birds
Bid them his message understand.

And from the forest all wild things
That crept or flew obeyed love’s call,
And learned from him the golden words
Of brotherhood for one and all.
Author Unknown

December finds himself again a child
Even as he undergoes his age.
old and early darkness now descends,
Embracing sanctuaries of delight.
More and more he stares into the night,
Becoming less and less concerned with ends,
Emblem of the innocent as sage
Restored to wonder by what he must yield.
Nicholas Gordon

Senseless is the breast and cold
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortur’d lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December’s bough.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

We wish you a merry Christmas; We wish you a merry Christmas;
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin.
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Traditional Christmas Carol

Deep at the bottom of the well no warmth has yet returned,
The rain which sighs and feels so cold has dampened withered roots.
What sort of man at such a time would come to visit the teacher?
As this is not a time for flowers, I find I’ve come alone.
Su Shi, Visiting the the Temple of Auspicious Fortune Alone on the Winter Solstice

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something
very beautiful, something which compels our understanding.
Earl W. Count, 4,000 Years of Christmas

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown:
O, the rising of the sun,
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.
Christmas Carol