Merry Christmas.

I’ve been giving my friends the same Christmas present for forty years. This is not just to save time and money. A good poem you can regift because it’s changed in the interim, because a poem is not a thing but a conversation, confession, confidence. Shakespeare’s been talking with me for sixty years and he’s always got something new to say that suits my new circumstance. There are as many flavors of Hamlet as omelet.

I call this poem good even though I wrote it, that is, my forbear, a dreaming restless young dad, alone in his study on a spring weekend morning (it must have been a weekend because I wasn’t at work; spring because the apple trees were in bloom), living an ideal life only it didn’t feel that way, it felt, well, stifling, not that I’d never have said so – especially to myself. Manliness in my ethos meant stiff upper lip, sucking it up, keeping up appearances, never showing weakness. So what I was a businessman, sadly married, pining to be a poet luxuriating in bohemian passions Puccini-style? We all have dreams. I had my work, kids, dog, apple trees, books and records (we kept music on vinyl then) – what more could anyone ask!

I must have been reading Yeats’ and T.S. Eliot’s takes on the three kings. These are grand poems, which you can click on – as I do, regularly – but ever so self-serious. The best poets in English in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century dreamed you could change the world by how you wrote a poem. World wars and the Nameless One vanquished such nonsense. Salvation if attainable is private and uncertain: it is so if we think so.

I also had in mind – as I always do – the three kings from my friend Gian Carlo Menotti’s great opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. If you don’t know it, quit these potherings and listen. And weep. Menotti’s kings are comic, goofy, kindly, funny, and oh so good.

My three kings would be guys like me, eager for a break from their conventional lives, but dubious it would do much good. I scribbled the poem in an hour – in a cadence and tone wholly unexpected and strange – to my astonishment getting just one word wrong. (Guess which.)

I also append – gob-smacked – Alistair’s take on what I made all those years ago. As a lark, I asked Alistair (surnamed Chat GPT) to analyze my effort – then gasped at his response.

Have a blessed holiday. Rest, so we can return to the fray strong. We face in 2026 a defining battle for civilization.

(Alistair’s inclusion made this missive overlong but, hey, it’s Christmas.)

First, my gift:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published What Made Them Wise

Two millennia, more or less,it’s been since three in fancy dress --kings, they claimed, but who could tell? --forsook their beds and citadelsto follow -- what? A dream? A star?Crazy how crazy some men are.

They packed their bags and kissed their wives,who studied them with grim surmise:‘What sort of babe could Jesus beto lure my love away from me?He said that angels bid them come. Believe that, I’ll tell you another one!’

The road was hard, the weather rude,the star kept hiding under clouds,as if to taunt them for their trust.The food was bad. Twice they got lostand had to ask the way of folkswho treated them like dressy jokes.

At last they came and found -- not much.A pauper baby in a hutch,a doting mom, a doubting dad,an inkeep bent on being paid,pothered by all this backyard fuss.A midnight baby -- just his luck!

The smell was putrid: urinous straw,six chickens waiting for the stew.They lifted up their kingly cloaksto clear the muck. A dopey oxdrooled on them. Was this the place?From cloudless sky the star shone yes.

They left their gifts and hurried home,annoyed, confused. Why had they come?Angelic voices or mid-life blues?To get away, to break the rules?The baby was, well, just a babe,hardly worth the trek they’d made.

And yet, the more they thought, the moreright it seemed to come, adore,heed the angels, track the star,startle the wives, and find afarin shabby straw a shining grace:a mother’s love, a baby’s face.

So should we all to Bethlehem, Christian and Jew and creedless men,return each year, despite the hootsof friends and clowns in business suits,travel far to find and seeGod’s gift in its simplicity.

Now Alistair’s take on it:

Here’s a close, literary analysis of the poem, moving from voice and tone to themes, imagery, and meaning.

The poem adopts a wry, skeptical, contemporary voice to retell the Nativity story, specifically the journey of the Magi. The speaker sounds amused, ironic, and at times openly dismissive:

This tone deliberately undercuts the traditional reverence associated with the Christmas story. The wise men are not saints or mystics here but flawed, middle-aged men acting on a hunch, a dream, or a desire to escape routine. The humor is often dry or slightly abrasive, which keeps the poem grounded in modern skepticism rather than religious piety.

Yet the irony is not mocking for its own sake. It serves as a setup for sincerity later.

The poem systematically strips the Nativity of its sacred gloss:

Joseph doubts, the innkeeper wants payment, and the baby is “hardly worth the trek they’d made.” By emphasizing disappointment, inconvenience, and anticlimax, the poem insists that if meaning exists here, it must be found without spectacle or certainty.

This demythologizing reflects a modern mindset: faith without proof, reverence without guarantees.

A recurring question throughout the poem is why the Magi came at all:

The poem refuses to give a single, pure motive. Instead, it presents belief as mixed with ego, boredom, longing, and confusion. Even the wives’ skepticism grounds the story in domestic reality, reminding us that belief often disrupts ordinary life and invites ridicule.

Importantly, doubt does not disqualify the Magi. Their confusion becomes part of the journey rather than a failure of it.

The emotional and thematic pivot occurs in the final third of the poem:

“And yet, the more they thought, the moreright it seemed to come, adore…”

Here the poem shifts from irony to quiet affirmation. What redeems the journey is not proof of divinity, miracles, or cosmic signs, but:

Grace is found not in holiness as grandeur, but in intimacy, vulnerability, and care. The phrase “shabby straw a shining grace” encapsulates the poem’s central idea: the sacred appears precisely where we do not expect it.

The final stanza broadens the poem’s scope beyond Christianity:

“Christian and Jew and creedless men”

Bethlehem becomes symbolic rather than geographic — a place one returns to year after year, despite cynicism, social pressure, or modern distractions (“clowns in business suits”).

The poem suggests that faith (or meaning) is not about doctrine but about choosing to look closely at simple, human goodness, even when it seems unimpressive or foolish.

At its heart, this poem argues that meaning does not announce itself. It often looks disappointing, inconvenient, or even absurd at first glance. Yet the act of going — of seeking, of showing up despite doubt — is itself meaningful.

The poem invites readers, religious or not, to reconsider what they dismiss as “not much,” and to recognize that simplicity, love, and presence may be the truest forms of grace.