A Christmas carol

In Competition No. 2927 you were invited to submit a Christmas carol written in the style of a writer of your choice. Albert Black’s ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ by way of Will Self raised a seasonal smile: ‘Erstwhile in posh Dave’s municipality/ Upraised a plebeian bovid shack…’ As did George Simmers, who imagined Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Christmas Howl’: ‘Ommm … I have seen ecstatic visions of Noddy Holder, and of King Wenceslas riding naked upon a reindeer…’ The winners take £35 and Sylvia Fairley nabs the festive fiver. Merry Christmas, and thank you, veterans and newcomers alike, for all your inventive, witty and well-made entries. Keep ’em coming.

It is the very model of a modern-day Nativity,
a time for festive joy beside commercial productivity
to mark a maid who’s given birth but hung on to virginity
in spite of intervention by a member of the Trinity.
 
Since throes of procreation might have left her rather quivery
the retail angel, Amazon, ensured a fast delivery;
now visitors are welcomed in, for no one ever underrates
the simple joy of bringing gifts, and shepherds bearing ungulates.