From For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
W. H. Auden
 
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —
Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
 
 
 
W. H. Auden – Wystan Hugh Auden – was born in 1907 in York, England, and died in Vienna, Austria in 1973. His family were part of England’s established minor gentry—both grandfathers were high Church clergymen, and he was brought up in a milieu of Anglicanism, private school, and Oxford. Auden began writing poetry as a teenager, but his career was never straightforward. He taught and lectured, and wrote essays, screenplays, libretti for operas, and journalism. Auden moved to the United States in 1939. Auden lived for a year in Brooklyn with a number of other artists and writers, including the composer Benjamin Britten and the novelist Carson McCullers. He also rediscovered his Christian faith through an encounter with the English writer Charles Williams, and through his study of thinkers like Kierkegaard and Niebuhr. The death of Auden’s mother, and the unfaithfulness of his partner, to whom Auden considered himself married, are in the background of For the Time Being, his most explicitly Christian work, in which he explores the basic idea of what difference the Incarnation makes in how we view the world.
 
Auden intended For the Time Being as the libretto of an oratorio to be composed by his friend Benjamin Britten. Britten only ended up setting a couple of short lyrics—it is said that when Britten saw how long For The Time Being was, he was quite angry!
 
The passage Jackie just read is from close to the end of the oratorio. Auden wonderfully captures the disconnect, which most of us have experienced by now, of putting Christmas away. “That is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, / Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes - / Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.” The holly and the mistletoe are tossed out, the children go back to school, and all our Christmas feasts have left us with cold leftovers and not much appetite. We have one more failed effort “to love all of our relatives” to put behind us.
 
We are putting away Christmas decorations and Christmas activities; but Auden goes on to suggest that, too often, that is what we do to Christmas itself—to Christ himself. “Once again / As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed / To do more than entertain it as an agreeable / Possibility, once again we have sent him away.” We have seen an “actual Vision,” the reality of Christ, and enjoyed the “agreeable / Possibility” of it, but we keep it at a distance. And thus, “here we all are, / Back in the moderate Aristotelian city / Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen.” The commonplace and the tangible dominate our reality again: the city, the chores, the schedules.
 
But even so, something has happened to us. As we return to this world of Aristotle, Euclid, and Newton—this world that can be measured and explained—it is not the same, or we are not the same. The kitchen table seems to have shrunk; the streets are narrower and the office more “depressing.” The world seems smaller because we have glimpsed something larger. The vision of Christmas has spoiled us: “To those who have seen / The Child, however dimly, however incredulously, / The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.”
 
For Auden, the Incarnation changes everything. It makes us restless. What do we do with this sense of disillusionment with the world as it is—with “the Time Being”?
 
As Auden writes at the end of his oratorio, this restlessness is also our mission: “There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, / Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem / From insignificance.” As we continue to do what needs to be done, our real task is much larger: to redeem the present from insignificance—to bring the mystery of the Incarnation to bear upon every aspect and every day of our lives.