My Christmas is very real !

The festival spirit has marked the days

Having fun and dancing in sways

Activities lined up and folks addressed 

Travels and family gatherings planned 

Feasting and partying and making merry 

Gifts and stockings filled light and heavy 

Santa dummies and look a-likes all around 

Sleds and reindeers adorn mall grounds

Chris-tingles, hollies and clovers in multiples 

Christmas music in loud and noisy jingles 

Towns and cities marking big business 

Schools closed, permitting clumsiness 

Wrapping gifts and expressing desires

Yet, unnoticed that little kid that aspires 

He knows not what it is like receiving gifts

For he never had that parent giving him lifts

That woman on the street thriving on dirt

Knows not that a festival means no hurt 

Forsaken members of our very own society 

Live in expectation for someone’s charity 

This Christmas let’s uplift someone’s life

Downplaying our ego by touching a life 

Pour out the drink in the glass with a thought

That we shall be merciful as lessons taught

May every child have enough milk to drink

Every family has their cup to the brink

A celebration and festivity is then blessed 

When each being is well fed and dressed 

A Christmas pudding and a mince fruit pie 

Evermore sweet when a hungry one we satisfy 

Educating our young not just to wish for fun

But, true joy comes by giving under the Sun 

Boxed gifts a plenty may we all receive 

Bigger pleasure in gifting smiles conceive 

Christmas is very real when joys multiply 

Good deeds doth a true worship signify

Published in the Asian Weekly, Edition 642 (23rd Dec – 29th Dec 2022)