It comes but once a year and doesn’t always bring good cheer, yet has given rise to verse ranging from schooldays subversion of carols (While shepherds washed their socks by night) to Milton and Hood, not to mention Thomas Hardy’s biting epigram Christmas: 1924.
'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
You are invited to try your hand at updating carols and songs or providing appropriate epigrams for our present climate-changed or political times, or just for fun. Maximum sixteen lines, but shorter always good, by 26 November please.
Ha-ha-HEE Ha-ha-HO! Ha-Ha-HAH!
Oz did not lose the urn! Oh, hurrah!
But, sadly, some darned Pommie blokes,
Root. Wood, Ali. Broad. Woakes, skipper Stokes,
And an Oval last innings collapse,
Saw the series escape our green caps.
First December, I must also say,
Will see LUPO’s resumption of play.