I Wonder About How Christmas Should Really Be? Poem by Gert Strydom

In the distance on a Sunday I hear a church-bell ring,
this Sunday is also for other people a season of festivity,
when the muezzin from the minaret in the distance calls loudly.
At night crackers and fireworks go off in the sky
and outside it's raining for a whole week long.
My beans push their tendrils up the reeds and flower white,
the peppers, brinjals and tomatoes are knee-high,
the pumpkins and Makataan-watermelons flower yellow
and onions push their thin green fingers up through the ground
when God in this summer gives new life to the earth.
The birds sing their songs of praise day and night
while humanity waits upon Christmas,
the shops overflow with all kinds of gifts,
Christmas-cakes finger-licking nice are to be bought
and still the hobo begs,
the homeless gum-sniffing disowned rejected child
and the unemployed white-man at almost every traffic-light.
A scorched young white-man
asks me for thirty Rand,
which does give new hope to him
when he can take bread and milk
to his shack in the squatter-camp.
I wonder about how Christmas should really be,
in a country where everyone lives only for himself
and hold the devil for the rest,
believe that people are too bad to work
and for that reason stand and beg
but do not walk in their tracks
where no work is available to them
and I do remember the God
that came as a human to this earth,
that brought Him as a sacrifice
to save all of humanity
and realise that each good word and act
is a gift to someone on every day of December,
that a person should not only celebrate Christmas on Christmas-day
and that God still does generously pour out His love and mercy.
l'Envoi
On Christmas-day I smell barbeque,
when the neighbours have a hubbub from early to late,
the grandchildren are overwhelmed with their gifts
and a four-year old girl says to me:
"a person should pray and pray again,
we should pray continuously without stopping
and that everything then will turnout to be very well."
I see tears and hope in the eyes of a rejected child,
see the man with the notice-board at the traffic-light smiling happily
and it's as if the hobo walks with a skip in his walk,
in the eyes of a broken person I see faith and new hope,
I notice a young white-man in jubilation as he has found a job
and there are balloons blowing away in the wind.

[Poet's note: In December it is summer in the southern hemisphere of the earth where the seasons are opposite to those in the northern hemisphere of the earth.]

© Gert Strydom