Forget your Christmas cards and little creche

the cutesy donkey, sheep and shepherd boys.

Put away the twinkle lights and all that trash;

the candy, carols, cards and tacky toys.

 

For there in your safe familiar manger

lies something that should shock and terrify—

a mewling, interstellar stranger,

an undercover agent—infant spy.

 

He promises to turn every table

and become an unrelenting master.

making the satisfied world unstable

and lashing the complacent with disaster.

 

Here shivers something unpredictable—

divine but defined, swaddled yet wild.

Here is something tender and terrible—

a feisty girl and her dangerous child.