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Speaker 1: Christmas omnipresent by Lee Hunt. Christmas comes, He comes, He comes,

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ushered with a rain of plums. Hollies in the windows

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greet him. Schools come driving posts to meet him. Gifts

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precede him, Bells proclaim him. Every mouth delights to name him.

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Wet and cold and wind and dark make him but

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the warmer mark. And yet he comes not one embodied universals,

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the blithe Godhead. And in every festal house presence hath

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ubiquitouse curtains, those snug room enfolders hang upon his million shoulders,

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and he has a million eyes a fire, and eats

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a million pies, and is very merry, and wise, very wise,

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and very merry, and loves a kiss beneath the berry.

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Then full many a shape hath he all in said ubiquity?

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Now is he a green array, And now an e

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and now a day. Now he's town, gone out of town,

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and now a feast in civic gown, And now the

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pantomime and clown with a crack upon the crown, and

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all sorts of tumbles down. And then he's music in

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the night, and the money gotten by it. He's a

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man that can't write verses, bringing some to oap your purses.

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He's a turkey, he's a goose, he's oranges unfit for use.

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He's a kiss that loves to grow underneath the mistletoe.

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And he's forfeits, cards and wassails, and a king and

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queen with vassals, all the quizzes of the time, drawn

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and quartered with a rhyme. And then, for their revival's sake, lo,

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he's an enormous cake with the sugar on the top,

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seen before in many a shop, where the boys could

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gaze forever. They think the cake's so very clever. Then

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some morning, in the lurch, leaving Romps, he goes to church,

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looking very grave and thankful, after which he's just as prankful,

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now a saint and now a sinner. But above all

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he's a dinner. He's a dinner where you see everybody's family,

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beef and pudding and mince pies, and little boys with

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laughing eyes, whom their seniors ask arch questions, feigning fears

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of indigestions, as if they forsooth the old ones hadn't

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privately tenfold ones. He's a dinner and a fire heaped

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beyond your heart's desire heaped with log and baked with

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coals till it roasts your very souls and your cheek

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the fire outstairs, and you all push back your chairs,

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and the mirth becomes too great, and you all sit

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up too late, nodding, all with too much head, and

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so go off to too much bed o, plethora of

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beef and bliss, Monkish feaster, sly of kiss, Southern soul

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in body, Dutch glorious time of great too much, too

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much heat and too much noise, too much babblement of boys,

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too much eating, too much, drinking, too much everything but

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thinking solely bent to laugh and stuff and trample upon base. Enough,

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Oh right, is thy instructive praise of the wealth of

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Nature's ways. Write thy most unthrifty glee and pious, thy

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mince piety. For behold, great Nature's self builds her no

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abstemious shelf, but provides her love is such for all

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her own great good. Too much too much grass and

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too much tree, too much air and land and sea,

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too much seed of fruit and flower and fish, an

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unimagined dower in whose single row shall be life enough

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to stock the sea. Endless ichthyophogy every instant through the day.

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Worlds of life are thrown away, worlds of life and

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worlds of pleasure, not for lavishment of treasure, but because

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she's so immensely rich and loves us so intensely. She

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would have us once for all wake at her benignant call,

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and all grow wise, and all lay down strife and

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jealousy and frown, and like the sons of one great mother,

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share and be blessed with one another. End of Christmas

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Omnipresent by Lee Hunt