The Holy Show
The Holy Show - meaning Summary
Child Longing for Shared Wonder
The poem recalls a childhood moment at a village Christmas display where the speaker’s spontaneous joy is shut down by embarrassed parents and wary locals. Their shame, tied to poverty and propriety, enforces exclusion and teaches that communal wonder is parceled and privatized. The child’s instinctive belief that the "holy show" models a shared, glittering world survives, and the poem ends by suggesting that this ideal reaches forward into wider, adult realms.
Read Complete AnalysesI was a toddler, wet-combed with my pants buttoned to my shirt and there were pink and green lights, pretty in the day, a Christmas-tree party up the back of the village store. I ran towards it, but big sad people stepped out. They said over me It's just, like, for local kiddies and but let him join in; the kiddies looked frightened and my parents, caught off guard one beat behind me, grabbed me up in the great shame of our poverty that they talked about to upset themselves. They were blushing and smiling, cursing me in low voices Little bugger bad boy! for thinking happy Christmas undivided, whereas it's all owned, to buy in parcels and have at home; for still not knowing you don't make a holy show of your family; outside it, there's only parry and front. Once away, they angrily softened to me squalling, because I was their kiddie and had been right about the holy show that models how the world should be and could be, shared, glittering in near focus right out to the Sex frontier.
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