Twas The Night Before... Poem by Jim Yerman

The carols and stories of the Christmas season are something I adore
But I must confess I’m getting tired of Twas the Night Before...

Twas the night before Christmas and all though the hood
The shopping was over and Daddy’d done good.

He’d gone to Best Buy, the great showroom floor
All this tech made him feel like a kid in a candy store.

Advertisers now take the Christmas classics, change the wording, change the spelling
To make us want to buy the goods and services they’re selling.

The messages on billboards, televisions and radios all belie
The new meaning of Christmas..which is to entice us all to buy.

Buy whatever it is they are selling...buy this items then buy some more
All hawked to rewritten Christmas carols or Twas the Night Before.

I wonder if James Pierpont would think it crazy or bizarre
That his beloved Jingle Bells was being used to sell us clothing or a new car.

Would Franz Gruber be angry...would he cringe at the very sight
Of stores selling new-age electronics to the tune of his Silent Night

I’m sure Clement Clark Moore as he was writing, in all his wonderful imaginings
Couldn’t have dreamed his Twas the Night Before would be used to sell so many things.

It seems they will rewrite any Christmas tradition in order to commercialize
Whatever it takes to get us to buy and then upgrade or supersize!

Why they’re even using Santa to sell items on radio and TV.
Since when does Santa sell items? I thought he gave them away for free?

Wait, as I watch Miracle on 34th Street it definitely appears
That the commercialization of Christmas has gone on for many years.

So what are we to do about this, certainly it is ourselves we are deceiving
When we forget the meaning of Christmas is in the giving not receiving.

Not the kind of giving in the commercials, not items stacked on the toy store shelf
I mean the kind of giving that comes from the heart, the giving of oneself.

If no one spent a dime in this commercial world in which we live
Imagine the kind of presents we’d all be forced to give.

We’d give our love, our time, our kindness, our friendship and what’s more
We could all go back to enjoying Twas the Night Before.