"Small, unpretending, domestic things"

St James' Church, Elstead, Surrey Hills

So writes Ursula Fanthorpe of her Christmas poems.  I was very fortunate in that the school where I taught invited many inspiring writers, she being one.  After her poetry reading and talk I approached her to ask if I might use her  ‘BC - AD’ poem for a Christmas card, as I had long thought this staggeringly beautiful and powerful, probably because it recounts a world-upending event in such ordinary terms… until the last couplet.   If you don’t know it, or need reminding of it, here it is,

BC - AD

This was the moment when Before

Turned into After, and the future’s

Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing

Happened. Only dull peace

Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans

Could find nothing better to do

Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment

When a few farm workers and three

Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight

Into the kingdom of Heaven.

U.A.Fanthorpe

Sometimes the title is written with a colon, or sometimes a hyphen, but whatever that little punctuation mark, it signifies something immense, the crossing-over from one world, through the Incarnation of the God of Love, into one forever redeemed.  The mystical hugeness of the Nativity is signalled by  “the future’s /Uninvented timekeepers presented arms”, but mainly Fanthorpe stresses the ordinariness of it all.  “Dull peace /Sprawled boringly” describes only an absence of political unrest at the time, a contrast against the opportunity for the peace the world cannot give, which the birth of Christ offers. 

There is irony in “This was the moment when nothing/Happened” - nothing obvious, perhaps, but also everything happened.  Fanthorpe conveys a quiet humour in her observation that  “even energetic Romans/Could find nothing better to do / Than counting heads in remote provinces”.  There are shades of Monty Python’s  Life of Brian and “What have the Romans ever done for us?”;  the poet implies that shifting around a conquered population was maybe just to show them who was boss, or maybe an exercise just to relieve their own tedium.  When we heard the Nativity story as children, and the census-taking which required Joseph and Mary to travel so uncomfortably and inconveniently, it seemed so important, so official, and they dare not disobey.  However, maybe it was just the first example of the tension between the whim of worldly power-play and the gospel alternative which Jesus proffered to his death, and beyond.  

The repetition at the head of each stanza,  “This was the moment…” alerts us that something unique, exceptional, yet quite hidden, is about to happen.  It seems that with an intake of breath we approach the climax, “And this was the moment…”   However, Fanthorpe continues to downplay the event a little longer by framing the identity of the shepherds and the three wise men as the Romans might view them, that is, dismissively and even contemptuously,  “a few farm workers and three / Members of an obscure Persian sect”.

And then…  The last two lines never fail to move me.  The explosion of light and love in

“Walked haphazard by starlight straight                                                                  I

nto the Kingdom of heaven.”

reinforces that it is through the gift of grace that we stumble “haphazard” into something wonderful.  May you and I continue that walk, lit by that inextinguishable star.

By the way, I never have used this poem for a Christmas card.  Maybe some day.