Thanksgiving Day till Christmas Stay

Thanksgiving Day till Christmas Stay

Holiday, holyday, religion still rules,
Kids can rejoice when fests close the schools.
Who is to be thanked for a harvest so fair--
A ghost on a cloud or the farmhands’ good care?

A birth in a stable, a shortage of beds,
And even three kings had only the sheds.
That town needed many more rooms for their crowd
Or not herd more folks there than lodging allowed.

What a dumb way to count heads, all jammed in one place,
No postage, no email, no address to trace.
Show up at the town of your birth, nowhere else,
So your rulers can sort you where your origin dwells.

Send the soldiers around to kill all young boys
For fear that their threat the ruler annoys.
Such oracles maimed all rational thought,
And for millennia this nonsense is taught.

Even worse, when the mind is thus stunted and squeezed,
And obedience enforced, and actions diseased,
Blocked is “Don’t envy, don’t lie and don’t kill”.
Who gains when all lose their use of free will?

--- Kate Jones