ART & POETRY BY PAUL & KATHY BOECHER

With the coming of Christmas, we imagine brilliantly colored lights adorning a Christmas tree. We picture decorations in a variety of jewel tones and bright reds and greens. Those fabulous hues are intended to brighten the darkness of winter evening skies; the simple purity of snow and ice; the frosty explosion from open mouths singing Christmas carols in the chilly air. Generally, we dress winter up in December for the celebration of Jesus birth. When Mary was ready to give birth, it was anything but a royal party. Mary was an unwed mother. She gave birth in holding place for baby animals. She would place her newborn in a feeding trough filled with straw. It was an unclean place, filthy with animal dung and the sound of those same animals as they sang their own lullaby. This baby was like none other. He was the Only Son of God. He should have been praised as a king, yet this lowly, humiliating birth would fulfill the prophesy written centuries before His birth.

The world has turned to black and white, enveloped in ice and snow,

Birds longing to sing their arias. feel temperatures soar below,

Some people say it should be spring, but heaven has other plans,

A drop of fresh snow will fall again sent by the Father’s hands,

Deceivingly warming climate is nothing more than fake words,

The thought of a global warming, seems absolutely absurd,

Looking on the wintry landscape, it makes me just wonder why,

We don’t have spring ’til summer and Christmas should be in July.