As stories go, the Christmas birth story as it has been accumulated through the centuries is quite the thing, isn’t it? Let me be honest with you: the overall theological interjections, who Jesus is, what he means, what is his relationship with what is a godhead are philosophical questions. Perhaps they are of supreme importance (some believe this so), but philosophy makes my head hurt. I may be an indifferent singer, but as a poet or poetry audience it’s the song that attracts me. Music, even small music, is sensory, it resonates. And if one takes all the things that have been added to the Christmas story, it’s the shepherds in the field, not the big angelic hosannas or even salvation — it’s the details that grab me.

One of my favorite Christmas posts by this project was my adaptation of Longfellow’s “Three Kings”  from three years ago. My adaptation focused on a new mother watching the breathing of her infant while the wisemen wizard’s gifts are explained in eschatological terms. What a contrast that is!

This year I decided to set this decidedly rural Thomas Hardy poem “The Oxen.”  which deals with one of the miracles that have been added as details to the Christmas manger scene. Hardy brings a novelist’s gift to his poem. His Christmas birth story is told as a story within a story within a story: countryside English children of Hardy’s youth’s era being told around a fireside that since there were stabled oxen in attendance to the Incarnation on the first Christmas, they and their kin were struck then, and ever after on its anniversary, with the need to kneel and worship the babe.

The speaker in the poem, telling us of being told this story is savvy. He recalls that no child on that hearthside wondered if the elder telling the tale had made it up. Those workaday adults seemed to have no time for authoring fantasy tales — and, in point of fact, they didn’t make it up. Like all great folklore, it’s a miracle of which we don’t know the author of.

So, the poem closes with two Christmas miracles: the cattle bowing in worship every Christmas Eve as midnight comes, and the miracle of plain, ordinary folks telling a joyous tale. Hardy closes by saying he wants the continued promise of those miracles.

The ox may be worshipful, but the donkey may just be asking when baby Jesus can get out of the hay supply

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As so often with things these days I had to set this poem to music quickly. As quickly as I wrote the music, I then had to wait for a couple of days for when the unscheduled time came that I could record it. I had trouble fretting the guitar that afternoon. I had had to scrub my hands hard to remove grease and dirt from doing some bicycle maintenance earlier that day, and my fingertips were still softened, a bit raw, and not ready for the wires. Still, I managed to get the basic tracks down. I added the rest of the parts you can hear in the performance below with my Little Plastic Keyboard which didn’t challenge the fingers so much. The sound I wanted to add, even in the drum parts, was bell-like — Clarence-angels getting their wings — but listening back to the result I think, unconsciously, I was recreating some of the sound of “Tim Hardin 3 Live in Concert,”  a document of a gig the addicted singer and guitarist performed so high, despite it being a recorded date, that the skilled Jazz musicians playing with him had to dance en-pointe to try to follow him. That tension, that seeking concord, that going to the stable expecting a miracle and dealing with what one finds instead, is to me the very spirit of Christmas.

You can hear my performance of Thomas Hardy’s “The Oxen”  with the audio player gadget below. No player to unwrap? This highlighted link is another way to hear it, as it will open a new tab with its own audio player.