Christmas is both a holiday and a holy day, and from the start it has been associated with poetry, from the song of the seraphim above the magner to the cherished carols around the punch bowl. This garland of Christmas poems contains not only the ones you would insist on finding here ("A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" among them) but such equally enchanting though lesser-known Yuletide treasures as Emily Dickinson's "The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman," Anthony Hecht's "Christmas Is Coming," Rudyard Kipling's "Christmas in India," Langston Hughes's "Shepherd's Song at Christmas," Robert Graves's "The Christmas Robin," and happy surprises like Phyllis McGinley's "Office Party," Dorothy Parker's "The Maid-Servant at the Inn," and Philip Larkin's "New Year Poem."
(from the publisher)

Selected and edited by John Hollander and J.D. McClatchy

Contents:
Annunciation and Advent
- Elizabeth Jennings: The Annunciation
- Christina Rossetti: Christmas Eve
- Gjertrud Schnackenberg: Advent Calender
Christmas Eve
- Walter de la Mare: Christmas Eve
- Christina Rossetti: Christmas Eve
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: from In Memoriam
- Robert Bridges: Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913
- Thomas Hardy: The Oxen
- Eugene Field: Jest 'Fore Christmas
- Clement Moore: A Visit from St. Nicholas
The Nativity
- Sir John Suckling: Upon Christ His Birth
- John Milton: On the Morning of Christs Nativity
- John Donne: Nativity
- Henry Vaughan: The Nativity
- Robert Southwell: New Prince, New Pomp
- Christopher Smart: The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
- John Heath-Stubbs: For the Nativity
- Stevie Smith: Christmas
- Dorothy Parker: The Maid-Servant at the Inn
- G. K. Chesterton: Joseph
- William Butler Yeats: The Mother of God
- Langston Hughes: Shepherd's Song at Christmas
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Three Kings
- T. S. Eliot: The Journey of the Magi
- William Carlos Williams: The Adoration of the Kings
- Rainer Maria Rilke: The Three Holy Kings
- W. S. Merwin: Carol of the Three Kings
Christmastide
- Ben Jonson: The Masque of Christmas
- Henry Vaughan: The True Christmas
- Sir Walter Scott: Old Christmastide
- Robert Louis Stevenson: Christmas at Sea
- Cecil Day-Lewis: The Christmas Tree
- Wendell Berry: Our Christmas Tree
- John Clare: December
Meditations on Christmas
- George Herbert: Christmas
- Robert Southwell: The Burning Babe
- Emily Dickinson: 'The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman'
- Richard Wilbur: A Christmas Hymn
- John Frederick Nims: Christmas
- Allen Tate: Sonnets at Christmas
- J. D. McClatchy: An Old Song Ended
- Dick Davis: A Christmas Poem
- Anthony Hecht: Illumination
Christmas Crackers
- William Makepeace Thackeray: The Mahogany Tree
- John Betjeman: Christmas
- Morris Bishop: The Dark Christmas on Wildwood Road
- Phyllis McGinley: Lady Selecting Her Christmas Cards
- Phyllis McGinley: City Christmas
- Phyllis McGinley: Office Party
Christmas Ironies
- Anthony Hecht: Christmas is Coming
- G. K. Chesterton: The House of Christmas
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Christmas Bells
- Rudyard Kipling: A Nativity
- Geoffrey Hill: Christmas Trees
- Mona Van Duyn: A Christmas Carol, After the Assassinations
- Chinua Achebe: Christmas in Biafra
- Thomas Hardy: A Christmas Ghost-Story
- Rudyard Kipling: Christmas in India
- Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Christmas Sonnet
- Cecil Day-Lewis: A Carol
- Robert Graves: The Christmas Robin
Christmas Songs and Carols
- Ben Jonson: Carol
- Robert Herrick: An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour
- Clement Paman: On Christmas Day to My Heart
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Christmas Carol
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: from In Memoriam
- William Morris: French Noel
- Countee Cullen: Christus Natus Est
- Donald Hall: A Carol
- Janet Lewis: A Lullaby
- Nahum Tate: While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night
- J. M. Neale: Good King Wenceslas
- Bishop Phillips Brooks: O Little Town of Bethlehem
- J. H. Hopkins: We Three Kings
- Edmund Hamilton Sears: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
- Joseph Mohr: Silent Night
- [traditional]: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming
- [traditional]: The Cherry-tree Carol
- [traditional]: I Saw Three Ships
- [traditional]: I Sing of a Maiden
- [traditional]: A Child This Day Is Born
- [traditional]: To-morrow Shall Be My Dancing Day
- [traditional]: Nowell Sing We
- [traditional]: The First Nowell
- [traditional]: The Holly and the Ivy
- [traditional]: Green Grow'th the Holly
- [traditional]: The Twelve Days of Christmas
- [traditional]: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
- [traditional]: Wassail, Wassail
- [traditional]: Here We Come A-wassailing
After Christmas
- W. H. Auden: from For the Time Being
- John N. Morris: Untrimming the Tree
- William Carlos Williams: Burning the Christmas Greens
- John Frederick Nims: New Year's Eve
- Christopher Smart: New Year
- Robert Lowell: New Year's Day
- Philip Larkin: New Year Poem
- Phyllis McGinley: Twelfth Night
- Elinor Wylie: Twelfth Night
- Robert Fitzgerald: Epiphany