A Poem and a Carol

I have suspended all recurring subscriptions for this Substack; no one will be charged going forward. I expect letters to be very infrequent indeed, until the depression and concomitant writer’s block lift, and I have less exhausting “gig work” eating up my time.

I do want to wish all of you the very best for the year to come, and much comfort and courage in this hard and strange Omicron season.

Every December of my childhood, my youth, and now my advancing middle age, mama recites A.A. Milne’s “King John’s Christmas.”

The real King John was, we medievalists like to point out, not nearly as bad as folklore suggests. The fact remains, however, that for more than 800 years, no male member of the royal family is christened with the name John; the damage of the memory of a grasping usurper (sustained by the Robin Hood myth) has endured for most of a millenium.

The poem tells us that King John was not a good man; we meet him as lonely and bitter and self-absorbed. And yet — Christmas is for him, too. I have identified with King John since I was five; the idea that someone might give me presents and want me around still strikes me as the most wonderful, unexpected, and undeserved act of grace.

King John was not a good man --
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air --
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon...
But no one came to tea.
And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune in the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.

King John was not a good man,
Yet had his hopes and fears.
They'd given him no present now
For years and years and years.
But every year at Christmas,
While minstrels stood about,
Collecting tribute from the young
For all the songs they might have sung,
He stole away upstairs and hung
A hopeful stocking out.

King John was not a good man,
He lived his live aloof;
Alone he thought a message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it
Against the chimney stack:
"TO ALL AND SUNDRY - NEAR AND FAR -
F. Christmas in particular."
And signed it not "Johannes R."
But very humbly, "Jack."

"I want some crackers,
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don't mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!"

King John was not a good man --
He wrote this message out,
And gat him to this room again,
Descending by the spout.
And all that night he lay there,
A prey to hopes and fears.
"I think that's him a-coming now!"
(Anxiety bedewed his brow.)
"He'll bring one present, anyhow --
The first I had for years."

"Forget about the crackers,
And forget the candy;
I'm sure a box of chocolates
Would never come in handy;
I don't like oranges,
I don't want nuts,
And I HAVE got a pocket-knife
That almost cuts.
But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!"

King John was not a good man,
Next morning when the sun
Rose up to tell a waiting world
That Christmas had begun,
And people seized their stockings,
And opened them with glee,
And crackers, toys and games appeared,
And lips with sticky sweets were smeared,
King John said grimly: "As I feared,
Nothing again for me!"

"I did want crackers,
And I did want candy;
I know a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I do love oranges,
I did want nuts!
And, oh! if Father Christmas, had loved me at all,
He would have brought a big, red,
india-rubber ball!"

King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all ...
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!

AND, OH, FATHER CHRISTMAS,
MY BLESSINGS ON YOU FALL
FOR BRINGING HIM
A BIG, RED,
INDIA-RUBBER
BALL!

It always makes me cry.

And a carol:

When my father's family escaped Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, they settled as refugees in England. This was after the USA, France and Denmark said "no"; my deep affection for the Royal Family is in no small part connected to the reality that Britain saved my family when no one else would. I hold dual citizenship, like my brother; unlike my brother, who is a professor at Exeter, I feel most at home in the American West.

A year later, when war broke out in 1939, my grandfather Georg was interned as an enemy alien, despite the fact that he was a Jewish war refugee. (Unlike the Americans with ethnic Japanese, the British only interned adult men.)

At Christmas 1939, my father and his sister and my grandmother were allowed to visit the internment camp on the Isle of Man. The internees —who included an uncomfortable mix of Austrian and German Jewish refugees and real Nazi sympathizers — put on a concert. They sang carols they all knew as part of their cultural heritage. Jewish or not, these songs were part of their shared patrimony.

This is the only carol my father -- who was not quite five years old -- remembers from that little concert where his papa sang to him. This is the song that connected him to his daddy that first Christmas of the war.

Vienna is the city that would not protect my family, and it is the city they loved. It is the city to which my grandmother would return, years after Georg died in a post-war car crash near Liverpool. My grandmother is buried in Vienna, and my cousins live there still.

It is a very good carol.

Merry Christmas.