A Feel In The Chris’mas-Air

Summary


"A Feel In The Chris'mas-Air" captures the bittersweet sensation that creeps in every Christmas season — a nameless ache that sits alongside appetite, energy, and the joy of watching children's flushed, excited faces. The speaker tries to pin down the feeling: is it the toy drums, the whistles, the blaring horns? He cannot quite locate it. What Riley evokes so precisely is the way festive happiness carries within it a quiet, unresolvable sadness that no amount of good cheer can fully chase away.

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They’s a kind o’ _feel_ in the air, to me.
    When the Chris’mas-times sets in.
That’s about as much of a mystery
  As ever I’ve run ag’in!–
Fer instunce, now, whilse I gain in weight
  And gineral health, I swear
They’s a _goneness_ somers I can’t quite state–
  A kind o’ _feel_ in the air.

They’s a feel in the Chris’mas-air goes right
  To the spot where a man _lives_ at!–
It gives a feller a’ appetite–
  They ain’t no doubt about _that_!–
And yit they’s _somepin_’–I don’t know what–
  That follers me, here and there,
And ha’nts and worries and spares me not–
  A kind o’ feel in the air!

They’s a _feel_, as I say, in the air that’s jest
  As blame-don sad as sweet!–
In the same ra-sho as I feel the best
  And am spryest on my feet,
They’s allus a kind o’ sort of a’ _ache_
  That I can’t lo-cate no-where;–
But it comes with _Chris’mas_, and no mistake!–
  A kind o’ feel in the air.

A wistful man on a snowy porch gazes at children inside — scene from A Feel In The Chris'mas-Air

Is it the racket the childern raise?–
  W’y, _no_!–God bless ’em!–_no_!–
Is it the eyes and the cheeks ablaze–
  Like my _own_ wuz, long ago?–
Is it the bleat o’ the whistle and beat
  O’ the little toy-drum and blare
O’ the horn?–_No! no!_–it is jest the sweet–
  The sad-sweet feel in the air.

Credits

James Whitcomb Riley was a beloved 19th-century American poet known as the "Hoosier Poet" for his dialect verse rooted in Indiana rural life. This poem is written entirely in that warm, colloquial voice — dropping letters, stretching syllables — which gave Riley's Christmas writing its uniquely intimate, spoken quality.