Nollaig Na mBan

(In Ireland, the feast of the epiphany is known as ‘Nollaig na mBan’, or ‘Women’s Christmas’)

It’s all over the radio this year
as if no-one ever noticed it before -
all talk of women celebrating
with their ‘women’s foods’
(goose and tea as opposed to the men’s
Christmas of whiskey and beef).

Well thanks a bunch for this grey-washed
little nothing of a day, tangled up
in broken Christmas lights,
the pudding still mouldering
in the back of the press
like a rusted civil war-era bomb.

What I wish for now is a day disrobed,
shivering in a slicing wind,
to remind us that this is no ‘little’ Christmas
but a day for casting the mind
past shedding pine trees,
through January’s darkness
to search for the horizon’s light;
a little more promised each day.

© Jessica Traynor

Are You Celebrating Women's Christmas?

Jessica Traynor is a Dublin poet. Her poems have appeared in SouthWord, the SHOp and the Moth and she has won the Listowel Poetry Prize. Her blog is jessicatraynor.wordpress.com