Christmas Eve in a Barn - Thomas Hardy's Poem

In 1915, Thomas Hardy published his beloved poem, The Oxen. (See below.) In it, he tells of how, on Christmas Eve, the animals always kneel in their barns to honor the birth of the Savior.

As a young girl, there was a part of me that believed that this could be true and really happen. For several years I resolved to set my alarm, slip out of the house just before midnight, and head to the barn so that I could quietly watch and see such beautiful homage.

Well, year after year I never got up, either too warmly snuggled up in my bed, or simply asleep and not hearing my alarm clock. And then suddenly I was old enough to know that it was just a story, and so I never went.

I'm older now, but I find that once again I'd like to be in a barn at midnight on Christmas Eve. I want to reflect on what it must have been like for Mary to have ridden a donkey so near to giving birth and then to deliver her child in a stable, placing her baby in a hay filled manger.

I've birthed six babies, and it isn't easy even when you are in a hospital and surrounded by good care. I've always had great respect and sympathy for Mary and what she endured. But the horsey girl in me finds barns to be a place of familiarity and peace. I rather think that I should find that there on Christmas Eve.

Even if the animals don't really kneel.

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

       by Thomas Hardy, 1915