So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the
Snow-white world,
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen.
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing, behind us - listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight
This shortest day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year, and every year.
Welcome, Yule!
--by Susan Cooper, 1977 written for The Christmas
Revels
Merry Holly, GraceAnne
GraceAnne A. DeCandido
Reader Writer Reviewer New York City
Part-time lecturer in children's and YA literature
Rutgers SCILS PDS
“And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you; not quite as the world sends
greetings, but with profound esteem, and with the prayer that for you, now
and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.”
Attr to Fra Giovanni 1513; possibly Greville MacDonald 1930s
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