Last night the church of All Souls Langham Place came alive with the students’ Christmas dinner. One highlight was Hugh Palmer, the rector, who dressed up as Father Christmas and told a poem – rather subversively, I should think, overturning the traditional roles of patron-client involved in dealings with the big fat man – outlining the true meaning of Christmas. The poem was published by U.A. Fanthorpe in 2002 and follows in the footsteps of C.S.Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and Shane Tharp’s Christmas in Hell, which I will reblog here as we come closer to Christmas Eve.
The Wicked Fairy at the Manger
My gift for the child:
No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort –
The workshy, women, wogs,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases,
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.
Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.
biblonia 
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