S.C. Peabody

My Christmas Secrets

Summary


"My Christmas Secrets" is a delightful Christmas poem narrated by a child bursting with holiday excitement and the impossible task of keeping gifts under wraps. May has already accidentally revealed baby's present and let slip a telling clue about mama's white gift — the one she'll need for getting tea. With gentle warmth and a knowing smile from mama, the poem captures the irresistible pressure of Christmas anticipation and the sweet chaos of a child's good intentions crumbling one secret at a time.

Read Online

Hurry Christmas! How you creep,
I’ve some presents I can’t keep,
Just this morning I forgot,
And told baby what I’d bought.

All he answered was, “Goo goo!”
So I don’t think that he knew,
I told mamma hers was white,
And she’d wear it every night.

A little girl accidentally spills Christmas gift secrets to her baby brother in a cosy kitchen, in "My Christmas Secrets"

That she’d need it getting tea.
Then my mamma smiled at me,
And she whispered, “Isn’t May
Letting secrets fly away?”

Credits

S.C. Peabody is a lesser-known early twentieth-century American poet whose work often appeared in children's periodicals and holiday anthologies. "My Christmas Secrets" is a rare example of a Christmas poem told entirely from a child's candid, self-aware perspective, giving it an endearing confessional quality.
Related tags
, , , , , , ,