Christmas Is

Christmas is

a beast with a velvet smile,

fed on receipts and pine-scented hope.

It breathes in the dollars

of struggling families,

inhales the perfume of want.

We buy trees—

uprooted miracles—

and stand them in our living rooms

like borrowed joy,

knowing they will die

as soon as the season is done.

We pay for light

to remind ourselves of light.

Strings of bulbs spell out meaning

on credit cards and extension cords.

The reason for the season

has a price tag,

and it rings louder than any bell.

You spend what you don’t have

to prove love exists.

You wrap debt in shiny paper,

slide it under a tree,

and smile—

knowing January is waiting

with its cold mouth open.

Christ-mass used to be

for the believers,

the ones who touched the wound

in the Savior’s side

and felt themselves healed.

It was blood and bread,

sacrifice without a register.

Now Christ is inconvenient.

He does not fit

into the math.

He throws off the margins.

The jingle-jangle

ain’t no reindeer.

It’s coin on coin,

plastic on plastic—

the sound of money

oiling the machine,

keeping capital holy

and hunger quiet.

Christmas is not asleep.

It is wide awake,

counting us,

counting on us,

while we hum carols

and call it joy.