Christmas, Part One: "We Are Folded All In A Green Fable"

My Christmas memories were formed in part by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.  During the Sixties, Goodyear annually issued a series of records (yes, 33 and 1/3 rpm records) titled The Great Songs of Christmas. The albums featured the best singers of the time, many of whom may be unknown to my younger readers:  Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day, Sammy Davis, Jr., et cetera.  I remember my father buying the record at the tire store each year, about the time that the first snow fell.  We listened to the music as we decorated the tree.

Ah, the innocence!   

                              Stanley Cursiter, "Orkney Landscape" (1952)

     Christmas Poem

We are folded all
In a green fable
And we fare
From early
Plough-and-daffodil sun
Through a revel
Of wind-tossed oats and barley
Past sickle and flail
To harvest home,
The circles of bread and ale
At the long table.
It is told, the story --
We and earth and sun and corn are one.

Now kings and shepherds have come.
A wintered hovel
Hides a glory
Whiter than snowflake or silver or star.

George Mackay Brown, The Wreck of the Archangel (1989).

Except for brief periods, George Mackay Brown spent his entire life in Orkney.  His poetry and prose reflect both the agricultural life and the sea life of the islands.  As "Christmas Poem" suggests, the world of Orkney seems to be a timeless one, or, perhaps better, one that moves with the rhythm of Time.

                              Bet Low, "In the Hoy Hills (Orkney)" (1977)