The Cultivation of Christmas Trees: Through the Eyes of Children (and the Child-like)

Abstract

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees is the last of Eliot’s Ariel Poems, appearing in the “new series” in 1954. An essay in verse form, it has not been highly regarded in the commentary. “There are several attitudes towards Christmas,” it opens, rather unimpressively. But voice here is critical; it is “child-like,” in its capacity for “both/and” that allows for the angel atop the tree to be seen as both decoration and angel. Herein lies the real character of Christmas, apparent in the child, represented in the child-like, and dramatized in the poem’s texture and structure. The humbleness of the poem is thus appropriate, participating in the “meanness” that surrounds the Birth in a stable, a mere decoration (or so it seems) that is a gift, both decoration and angel.