T.S. Eliot: Christmas from the Magi's Point of View

Dear Kari:

I have to say I am not a been a big fan of poetry. There are some poems I like but I couldn't recite them back to you.

Last month I was talking with a friend who loves poetry. He shared something he recently came across that he liked. He read it aloud. The cadence, word pictures and deep emotion was haunting and it lodged itself in my memory.

I had to try to find it again.

There are a number of web sites devoted to the works of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) and here is one brand name Eliot site. However, the work, "Journey of the Magi," that lingered in my mind was not easily found on the internet because apparently it is still under copyright. I don't know copyright laws and how they work. I know I cannot reproduce the entire poem on the internet. However, would excerpting parts of it in the context of discussing it be acceptable?

There are many aspects to the Christmas story and in "Journey of the Magi," T.S. Eliot takes us into the minds of the Magi in their undoubtedly arduous journey to find the Christ child and then into the transformation of their world view.

Today, we can jump into a car and go somewhere. If we have enough money we can get on a plane and be half a world away in a day's time. But back then, the journey of the Magi would have been a slow one. Eliot wrote:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

Today, when we plan a trip, we can go on our computer to map the route, select our motel stays with a click of a button and tap the keyboard to enter our credit card numbers. Not so in the olden days:

And the cities hostile and towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

Did the Magi begin to wonder if it was worth the journey?

At the end we preferred to travel all night
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Eliot foreshadowed the significance of the birth of Jesus by a simple picture of His future death on the Cross (three trees) and the liberation from sin and death as symbolized by the departure of the old white horse.

And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Heaven had come to earth in Jesus birth and he described the adoration in a mere two lines but with a powerful under statement in the last half of the second line.

But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

Eliot then nails down the transformation of the experience. Eliot's Magi voice became mostly first person.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

When we hear the words of the Hallelujah chorus (#44 Handel's Messiah) this season -- Hallelujah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is becoming the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever and ever. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. -- it began with the Child the Magi came so very far to see and once seen, truly seen, we are not the same.

Have a wonderful Christmas, Kari and a happy New Years.

Yours truly,
Rene