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Speakin' O' Christmas

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A Peculiar Parish Edition by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Somehow it don’t seem to me
Christmas like it used to be

A little snowfall, toys for the kids, and winter fun amongst good friends—what more could anyone want from Christmas? Written against the backdrop of a rapidly industrializing America, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Speakin’ O’ Christmas” paints a rosy picture of holiday merriment at odds with the reality of the season’s growing commercialization.

Your first read may put you into a festive spirit. Return to the poem again, though, and its seemingly simple message may conjure more complexity and a desire to delve deeper into the works of one of the twentieth century’s finest poets.

A Peculiar Parish Edition by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Somehow it don’t seem to me
Christmas like it used to be

A little snowfall, toys for the kids, and winter fun amongst good friends—what more could anyone want from Christmas? Written against the backdrop of a rapidly industrializing America, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Speakin’ O’ Christmas” paints a rosy picture of holiday merriment at odds with the reality of the season’s growing commercialization.

Your first read may put you into a festive spirit. Return to the poem again, though, and its seemingly simple message may conjure more complexity and a desire to delve deeper into the works of one of the twentieth century’s finest poets.

  • Fiddler’s Green

    Leaflet Zine, 12 pages.

 

About Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish

Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine was born of a languid afternoon of conversation on a sunny tavern lawn. Taking its name from the pleasant afterlife dreamed into being by sailors, cavalrymen, and other adventurous spirits, Fiddler’s Green gathers friends, good cheer, and a bit of magic to create a better world not someday, but now.

In ecclesiastical terms, the word “peculiar” refers to a district outside the jurisdiction of the Church. It’s also a good word for describing my own view of reality, and likely yours as well. And so here is a “peculiar parish magazine” for anyone who doesn’t feel the need to have their inner life directed by others. If it is peculiar that we wish to govern our bodies and souls ourselves, then let us be peculiar.

The conversation continues, and there is room for you in it. Each of us is on our own journey, both in this world and whatever lies beyond it. Sometimes the path is well lit; at other times it is obscured. Your wanderings have brought you here, and I hope you’ll stray for a while with me and the other souls gathered at Fiddler’s Green.

Clint Marsh [Publisher]

Description

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American writer of poetry, prose, and plays. Born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio to formerly enslaved parents from Kentucky, Dunbar was a poet from a young age. He published his first verses at sixteen in the Dayton Herald. Two years later, in 1890, he wrote and edited The Tattler, a short-lived weekly newspaper financed by a pair of high-school acquaintances, Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Dunbar self-published his first book, Oak and Ivy, in 1893, selling it to passengers at his job as an elevator operator. Consisting of a mix of traditional and dialect verse, the book caught the attention of prominent critics and helped propel Dunbar’s brief and brilliant literary career. He went on to write nearly twenty more books, a musical, and a play, as well as the lyrics to In Dahomey, the first Broadway production written and performed by African Americans.

Tuberculosis marked the final years of this prolific and influential writer’s life, claiming him at the age of thirty-three. The poem presented here was first published posthumously, in 1914.