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The Twelve Days of Christmas run from Christmas Day to the Epiphany, on 6th January, the day on which the Wise Men arrived at the stable in Bethlehem, in search of the new born Saviour, Jesus Christ. It is a time of festivities and partying, taking in New Year celebrations and marking new beginnings. 

Of course, it’s also a time when folk take stock, looking back over the year that’s passed and thinking ahead to the new year just begun, with all its challenges, opportunities and excitement. Perhaps it’s new resolutions that might spur you on to do something different in your way of living – or maybe you want to take time to be thankful for many good things. However you spend this period, may it be a time of hope and optimism as we ring out the old and ring in the new.

As Christmas Eve arrives, let’s take a moment away from the frantic and frenzied preparations for the holiday season and relax with Thomas Hardy’s evocative poem, The Oxen.

The Oxen

Written in 1915, Hardy was inspired to write this poem after sitting one Christmas Eve with other folk by the fire. They imagined the scene on the night that Jesus was born in a stable, surrounded by animals – ox and ass. As if recognising that this was a special birth, the animals knelt at the baby’s crib in homage. But, as if in keeping with the forlorn spirit of the age Hardy introduces a note of world weariness – surely few folk would nowadays believe that such a thing might happen? And yet, sounding a tone of eternal optimism, he states how, if someone were to suggest that ox and ass were kneeling today in homage to the birth of the king, he would willingly make his way to the barn hoping it to be true.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
 ‘Now they are all on their knees,’
 An elder said as we sat in a flock
 By the embers in hearthside ease.

 We pictured the meek mild creatures where
 They dwelt in their strawy pen,
 Nor did it occur to one of us there
 To doubt they were kneeling then.

 So fair a fancy few would weave
 In these years! Yet, I feel,
 If someone said on Christmas Eve,
 ‘Come; see the oxen kneel,

 ‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
 Our childhood used to know,’
 I should go with him in the gloom,
 Hoping it might be so.

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Another of Isaiah’s prophecies:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)

Christmas Eve is almost here and with it comes the birth of our Saviour. Emmanuel means ‘God is with us’. A simple phrase but a deeply significant meaning. The coming of Jesus to live a human life means that we are no longer alone. God as the Christ-child means that he shares in every human emotion and situation. One of our favourite carols has the line:

‘He was little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew…’ 

(Once in royal David’s city, Cecil Frances Alexander)

In another carol we sing:

‘Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.’

(Hark! the herald angels sing, Charles Wesley)

Emmanuel. God is with us, and for us, now and always.

Alleluia!