Aside from telling you what my favourite Christmas carols are, this poem is really about Cambridge’s wintertime, when we’ve all left for the holidays. I often wonder what Cambridge is like on Wednesday evenings when there are no students to tumble into and out of Cindies, on mornings when the droves of cyclists no longer swarm into the town centre, when the cafés are no longer packed with those hunched over a laptop screen in between lectures. Quiet, I imagine.

It’s hard to think of Cambridge without its students – after all, I’m only there when everyone else is – which is probably the reason why I can’t stop talking about them here. In fact, part of this poem draws on my feeling this time two years ago when I was up for interviews, exploring the town after most had gone home to relax and enjoy a work-free holiday, or so I naïvely assumed. At the end, though, it’s about a very 2016 anxiety. Cambridge may be quiet at this time of year, but we shouldn’t be.

Christmas in Cambridge! is now nearby,
The streets are lit, glitter applied;
I walk through King’s Parade and hear
The chapel choir, sweet to the ear
Sing of a bleak midwinter time
When Corpus Clock would fail to chime,
When students had not yet seen Life,
When Class Lists had not yet caused strife.
A wonderful time! it is to stray
On King’s Parade, hear the organ play.
But soon we must be passing on
To Market Square, all students gone!
For Fellows ceased to call us in
With essays primed, our faces thin
From nights spent up, slaving away
As in the distance, carols played.
That time is gone! All students now
Are home (save those still left in town).
Under these lights, these gaudy shows,
These Christmas trees, these hopes of snow,
Cambridge lies dormant, not to hear
The shouting students ‘till next year.
‘Bah!’ exclaims a furrowed brow,
As he trudges past where King’s brown cows
Would spend their summer months at ease;
Now a pheasant eats among the trees;
‘Humbug!’ Let’s not be this Cambridge
Scrooge, instead we’ll let a partridge
Enter our carols, as we sing
Of jingling bells that duly ring.
Bridgemas gone; but Christmas to come,
Celebrate outside, though fingers grow numb,
And raise a glass to those who stay
In Cambridge! home of work (and play);
And hope for a better year in store;
Hope powers that be make love? not war.
Perhaps a certain one, not love, not war,
No walls; but tolerance, for all his flaws.
Merry Christmas to all; Happy New Year,
Let worries disappear in festive cheer.