Explore "The Crime of Christmastime" by Irving Sidney Dix on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. Two thousand years! -- two thousand years / Since Mary, with a mother's fears, / Brought forth for all humanities / The Christian of the centuries; / And now men turn from toil away / To celebrate his natal day / By feasting happy hours away / And giving gifts with lavish hand, / Throughout the length of every land; -- / A noble custom nobly born / In Bethlehem one holy morn, / But intermingling with the good, / A pagan custom long has stood, / As you and I and all may see -- / This war against the greenwood tree, / This robbing of posterity, -- / Until the burden of my rhyme / Is of this crime of Christmastime.
II. The skies are white with soft moonlight; / In Christian lands the lamps burn bright, / In splendor gleaming from the walls / Of parlors and of festive halls; / Or yet, amid some snow-white choir, / Sweet maidens sing the world's desire, / Till, answering in low refrain, / The people all repeat the strain / Of "peace on earth, to men good-will,"