Milton on The Nativity

My pastor has been defending the celebration of Christmas here for several days now. His thoughts are worth reading. Those arguments often raised against Christmas, which insist that our practices stem from pagan rituals, reminded me of this poem by John Milton titled Hymn On The Nativity. It is quite long, so I will only quote a portion:

The oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arch-ed roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance, or breath-ed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

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The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;

From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent

With flower-interwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

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In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemurs mourn with midnight plaint.

In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

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Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim

With that twice-battered God of Palestine;

And moon-ed Ashtaroth

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shrine;

The Libyac Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

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And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue:

In vain with cymbals ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue:

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

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Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud;

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrelled anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.

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He feels from Judah's land

The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne;

Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine;

Our babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damn-ed crew.

Milton artfully makes the point that all the gods of the nations are idols, and an idol is nothing. The Christ can control them from his very cradle. We need not fear these gods who cannot speak, see, hear, smell, feel, or walk. Nor need we fear their followers, for all who make and trust in them will become like them! (Ps. 115)