My 2025 Christmas reflection is “Journey of the Magi” by Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965), better known as “T.S. Eliot.”

Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri but moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25. He became a British citizen in 1927. That same year he converted to the Anglo-Catholic Church, and wrote “Journey of the Magi.” Eliot described his religious beliefs as “a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament.” 

Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” retells the symbolic story of the biblical Magi who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, travelled to Bethlehem to visit the newborn Jesus. The poem is a narrative, told from the point of view of one of the Magi. It expresses themes of alienation, regret, and a feeling of powerlessness in a world that has changed. In 1927, T.S. Eliot’s spiritual world had changed significantly as well.

The birth of Jesus was the death of the world of magic, astrology, and paganism (cf Colossians 2:20). Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection brought change, hope, and new life.

The speaker, recalling his journey in old age, suggests that after that birth his world had died, and he had little to do but wait for his own death and movement to new life. The poem is not pessimistic. But the journey’s physical hardships mirror the internal struggle of letting go of old beliefs for a deeper truth, revealing that spiritual awakening can be a traumatic but necessary path to a new meaning. T.S. Eliot’s spiritual awakening was his letting go of Unitarianism and becoming an Anglo-Catholic Christian.

T.S. Eliot is my favorite poet. His lines from the poem “Little Gidding” inspired my blog: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

 

JOURNEY OF THE MAGI

 

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.’

And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted.

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly.

And the villages dirty and charging high prices.

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down.

This set down.

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

My warmest regards to all and every good wish for Christmas and the New Year 2026.  I will be with family and friends for a couple of weeks but return to Another Voice on January 7th.

• Jack