holiday – sethlewis.ie

I’m Dated (and you are, too)

New Year’s Day, 2025. The day we all start having to pause to remember what year to write on forms and checks and such, or when we start writing it wrong and having to scribble it out and start again. What will this New Year bring? No one really knows. Looking back is easier—we know what the past is. For good or bad, it’s done. Before long, this past year that was so current, so vital and cutting-edge yesterday will start to feel stale and dated. Old. Has been. Whether we look back on it as the good old days or some kind of personal dark age doesn’t change the fact that we will look back on it. There was a New Year’s Day last year, too. Do you remember it? Or ten years ago, or twenty? Last Halloween I saw that they were selling ’90’s costumes, as if the ’90’s weren’t just last week. But they did look a bit funny.

The First Noel (a poem)

There was fear in the fields
When the angels came
When the heavenly beings
Appeared to men—
But then
Who wouldn’t be
Terrified
When the sky rips through
And the unseen realm
Is on top of you?
What had been one more
Silent night
Was suddenly
Ablaze with light
With gloria in excelsis Deo
The armies of heaven
Invading earth to
Tell some lonely
Shepherds few
“The King of kings has come for you!
He’s lying in a feeding trough”
And if, my friends,
That’s not enough
To make your eyes go wide
With wonder
You can look away and cling to
Cozy festive cheer to jingle
All the way—but wait! The day
A child came
To conquer death
And vanquish hell
Is glorious—
The first noel
This babe is Lord
Above all things
And heaven and nature sings
And heaven and nature sings

Wanting What I Already Have

There are strings of lights and stacks of chocolates growing in the shops, and the annual question is already hanging in the air: what do you want for Christmas? Mind you, the answer is meant to be something that fits neatly inside of wrapping paper, under a tree or in a stocking. ’Tis the season to assess what we all have and (more specifically) don’t have so that we can give each other good gifts that are actually wanted. I’m all for it. Social pressure to think about other people’s desires and happiness is a good thing, and if other people are thinking about my desires as well, that’s not bad. But as we all think hard about what everyone wants and doesn’t have yet, I’d like us to pause for a moment and remember a truth that can easily get lost in the flurry of festivities: it is possible to want what you already have.

Hot And Cold (a poem)

Thanksgiving is an American tradition that our family will never, ever give up. The feast is amazing, but so is the logic: a holiday especially made for giving thanks! You have to give the pilgrims credit: they were clever. Giving thanks is one of the healthiest, happiest things you could ever do. Not just with a feast, and not just on the fourth Thursday in November—it’s a habit that can reshape our perspectives and grow contentment in our hearts all year long. That’s what this poem is about:

Playing In Power

It has taken me more than four decades of living to fully appreciate this, but a good wetsuit is a wonderful thing. Long sleeves, long legs, thick and tight and warm. The ocean is never warm in this part of the world. But a good wetsuit can give you a couple of millimetres of protection and believe me those millimetres are everything.

When I’m suited up, I walk confidently into the water. I’m ready to catch some waves. My son is beside me but our bodyboards collide and we’re laughing as my daughter flies past us on a fast one. We cheer her on, pick up our boards, and go again. And again. And again.

Hope > Optimism

I hope you have a happy Christmas, or a merry Christmas if you say it that way, and a happy New Year. I hope your celebrations this month are trouble-free and full of joy, and I hope 2023 is better for you than 2022. Of course there’s probably nothing I can do to actually make that happen for most of you, but I hope it for you anyway. We don’t know what’s around the next corner, so we might as well be optimistic about it.

I’ve always been an optimist. I’ve got so much optimism I can be an optimist for you as well, if you want me to. I can believe all the best things about your future and mine. It comes naturally for me, so it’s no trouble. The only trouble with the whole thing is the trouble that keeps popping up and spoiling my optimistic outlooks. Sometimes everything doesn’t work out. Sometimes it’s not ok. Sometimes it’s not grand, it’s not good, and it’s not even fine. As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes my optimism is just plain wrong. So I still hope you have a happy Christmas, but I’m also painfully aware that my positive thoughts won’t be able to make that happen for you.

A Day Off

The only sound I hear is the faint ticking of the clock, telling me that this moment is still bound to time, but I don’t believe it. I must have been asleep, but everything is still the same: My glasses are still beside me, somewhere (I hope). My head is on my wife’s leg, and the room is perfectly still, as if nothing had ever moved here, ever. The sun is still throwing shapes on the wall, lines and angles and what’s that called—maybe a trapezoid?

Five Kernels Of Corn

Growing up in America, Thanksgiving Day was one of the highlights of the whole year. Some years my family travelled to feast with others, other years guests came to feast with us. I remember the leaf piles, laughter, and Atari games with my cousins, and when we were home, I remember the five kernels of corn.

We would sit at tables that had been fully extended, knowing that the biggest feast of the year was waiting in the kitchen. We could smell it. We could nearly taste it. The tables were dressed up with the best tablecloths and plates, and on each one of those plates were five carefully counted kernels of corn. Before we ate them, my mom reminded us why they were there: she told us about the Pilgrims who landed in the new world seeking religious freedom, and how they struggled to survive those early winters in the wilderness. She told us how local Native American tribes helped the struggling Pilgrims, teaching them the right times and ways to fish and grow crops in a new environment. But then, just when they started to get ahead, a ship full of new settlers arrived without food supplies. To keep themselves alive, the entire settlement was reduced to a ration of just five kernels of corn a day. Could you imagine? Somehow, they made it through that winter and lived to bring in a good harvest the next year. As they celebrated that harvest with the local tribes who had helped them, they began their feast together with a reminder: five kernels of corn were placed on each plate, “lest anyone forget”.

Don’t Skip Easter Saturday

This is the most unusual Easter weekend any of us have ever seen, and hopefully ever will. The sun is blazing where I live, but we can’t go out and we can’t even have church services to mark the most important day in the Christian calendar. This Easter Sunday will be different, to say the least. But I can’t stop thinking about Easter Saturday.

It’s the day we normally set aside for egg hunts and preparation for Sunday’s celebrations. It’s the day that even the gospels skim over, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The day between death and resurrection. The day when Jesus’ disciples were heartbroken and hopeless, even though they were only one day away from seeing the greatest victory the world has ever known.

Good Friday (A Poem For Christmas)

I do realise that Good Friday is actually a separate holiday from Christmas. But I also realise that if it hadn’t been for Good Friday, we’d have no reason to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Christmas is about how the same God we all tried to push away came down and invaded our world anyway, come to rescue us from the broken reality we created, come to give us life at the cost of his own. Even at Christmas, the shadow of the cross hangs over the manger, and the glory of Easter resurrection is just around the bend! So this Christmas, I submit to you that a poem about Good Friday is not out of season:

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