Christmas, they say, comes but once a year. In these days it seems to also last for much of that year.

For the religious amongst us, this annual celebration of the Birth of Christ must seem bitter sweet; it’s acknowledgment by billions of people countered by the pervasive spread of material possessions, translating the event to little more than a sales pitch for their own wares.

Most religions celebrate their founders but Christianity seems somehow to have lost possession of one of its key rituals in an ever more secular West. The spread of globalisation seems to have hindered rather than helped the true meaning of the festival. Children today are much more interested in what presents they might receive than any spiritual message. As parents too, most of us buy into this and we seem to indulge our offspring rather than the themes and aims of the festival’s meaning common to us all.

In this collection we rely on the words and wisdom of such fine poets as John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Sir Walter Scott, Daniel Sheehan, Wordsworth, Longfellow and a whole host of others to absorb us in a Christmas time of hope and togetherness set amongst a landscape of winter wonderment and Nature’s palest palette. The experiences and memories they share with us speak of a time, of a world, that did have a common purpose and an ambition to share good fortune with everyone.

1 - Christmas Poetry - An Introroduction

2 - On the Morning of Christs Nativity by John Milton

3 - Nativity by John Donne

4 - Carol by Ben Jonson

5 - A Christmas Carol by Samual Taylor Coleridge

6 - The Nativity by Henry Vaughan

7 - An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour by Robert Herrick

8 - New Prince New Pomp by Robert Southwell

9 - A Christmas Carol by Aubrey De Vere

10 - The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Christopher Smart

11 - The Three Kings by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

12 - A Christmas Carol by G. K. Chesterton

13 - The Beautiful Mother by Jacopone da Todi

14 - Upon Christ His Birth by Sir John Suckling

15 - No Mercy Here by Daniel Sheehan

16 - A Nativity by Rudyard Kipling

17 - God Rest by Daniel Sheehan

18 - The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

19 - A Visit From St Nicholas ('Twas The Night Before Christmas) by Clement Moore

20 - Old Christmastide (An Extract) by Sir Walter Scott

21 - Christmas Eve by Christina Rossetti

22 - The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

23 - The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

24 - The First Snowfall by James Russell Lowell

25 - The White Snow by Guillaume Apollinaire

26 - Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 - Ring Out Wild Bells. Christmas Poem by Alfred lord Tennyson

28 - Minstrels. A Christmas Poem by William Wordsworth

29 - As Sleigh Bells Seem In Summer by Emily Dickinson

30 - Christmas At Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson

31 - The House of Christmas by G K Chesterton

32 - The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

33 - Winter Sunset by Katharine Tynan

34 - Joseph by G K Chesterton

35 - Winter Evening Hymn To My Fire by James Russell Lowell

36 - In The Bleak Midwinter by Christina Georgina Rossetti

37 - The Farm Woman's Winter by Thomas Hardy

38 - The Savior Must Have Been A Docile Gentleman by Emily Dickinson

39 - Winter by Robert Louis Stevenson

40 - Christmas Carol by Sara Teasdale

41 - Winter Heavens by George Meredith

42 - The Mahogany Tree by William Makepeace Thackeray

43 - Christmas Fancies by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

44 - The Masque of Christmas by Ben Jonson

45 - Christmas For Atheists by Daniel Sheehan

46 - Christmas Poem by Robert Herrick

47 - December Sales Drive by Daniel Sheehan

48 - The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

49 - The Mother of God by William Butler Yeats

50 - A Christmas Ghost Story by Thomas Hardy

51 - A New Years Eve in Wartime by Thomas Hardy

52 - Ghosts of the Old Year by James Weldon Johnson

53 - 'Twas Just This Time Last Year I Died by Emily Dickinson

54 - The Meeting by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

55 - The Old Year by John Clare

56 - The Death of the Old Year by Alfred Lord Tennyson

57 - At the Entering of the New Year by Thomas Hardy

58 - Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns