Fifty Shades of Christmas: 50 of the best poems about everyones favourite holiday

Over the centuries the Christian festival of the celebration of Christ has lost much of its religious element as it has morphed into becoming a convenient date for mass marketing and the consumption of excess food, drink and material goods to a now global audience.
But look below the glossy veneer of commercialism and we find a truer meaning, a moral message and guidance that whilst we may all want it watered down a little in these more secular times does contain some truths and principles for us all to enjoy better lives and better relationships with those around us.

In this volume of fifty poems our classic poets bring us everything from the tried and trusted view to the irreverent but mainly focus on their faith that can rejoice at this festival and makes us all part of the human race, its ideals and its joys.

1 - Fifty Shades of Christmas - An Introduction

2 - The Nativity by Henry Vaughan

3 - Nativity by John Donne

4 - Wondrous Sight For Men and Angels by Ann Griffiths

5 - Angels From the Realms of Glory by James Montgomery

6 - New Prince New Pomp by Robert Southwell

7 - The Three Kings by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

8 - The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Christopher Smart

9 - Christmas Carol by Sara Teasdale

10 - A Nativity by Rudyard Kipling

11 - A Christmas Carol by Aubrey De Vere

12 - Carol by Ben Jonson

13 - A Christmas Carol by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

14 - A Christmas Carol by G K Chesterton

15 - The Beautiful Mother by Jacopone da Todi

16 - Upon Christ His Birth by Sir John Suckling

17 - An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour by Robert Herrick

18 - A Carol. I by Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland

19 - The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

20 - A Christmas Ghost Story by Thomas Hardy

21 - God Rest by Daniel Sheehan

22 - December Sales Drive by Daniel Sheehan

23 - Christmas For Atheists by Daniel Sheehan

24 - The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

25 - Christmas Eve by Christina Rossetti

26 - The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

27 - A Visit From St Nicholas ('Twas The Night Before Christmas) by Clement Moore

28 - Old Christmastide (An Extract) by Sir Walter Scott

29 - In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Georgina Rossetti

30 - On the Morning of Christs Nativity by John Milton

31 - The Mother of God by William Butler Yeats

32 - Winter Sunset by Katharine Tynan

33 - Joseph by G K Chesterton

34 - The White Snow by Guillaume Apollinaire

35 - A Winter's Sad Retreat by Daniel Sheehan

36 - December's Snow by Arthur Conan Doyle

37 - As Sleigh Bells Seem In Summer by Emily Dickinson

38 - Winter Heavens by George Meredith

39 - Sweetheart Winter by Vachel Lindsay

40 - The Foolish Fir Tree by Henry Van Dyke

41 - Minstrels. A Christmas Poem by William Wordsworth

42 - The Mahogany Tree by William Makepeace Thackeray

43 - The Savior Must Have Been A Docile Gentleman by Emily Dickinson

44 - Twas Just This Time Last Year I Died by Emily Dickinson

45 - The House of Christmas by G K Chesterton

46 - Christmas at Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson

47 - Christmas Fancies by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

48 - Christmas Poem by Robert Herrick

49 - The Masque of Christmas by Ben Jonson

50 - Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

51 - Ring Out Wild Bells. Christmas Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson