There are a set of poems you’re quite likely to have committed to memory. You might not know them in their entirety, but you could probably recite their first verses, and you’ve probably heard them a few times already this year, although you may not realise it.

I’m talking about Christmas carols, long ignored by literary theorists, despite being the most well known and widely recited poems of our time. The same perceptions that have resulted in the hymn being denied the status of literature have also forced carols outside the realm of artistic worthiness. Their popularity, religious subject matter and festive commercialisation seem to negate any sense of individual or unique expression.

These stereotypes are dispelled by Christina Rossetti’s 'In the Bleak Midwinter'. Originally titled ‘A Christmas Carol’, it was first published in Scribner's Monthly in January 1872, and later appeared in the English Hymnal of 1906, where it was paired with a tune composed by Gustav Holst. 'In the Bleak Midwinter' is no merry Christmas song sprinkled with mentions of stables and angels. It’s an intensely sincere and evocative devotional poem.

Rossetti’s verse demonstrates her characteristic economy of expression which seamlessly blends the bleak northern winter with the biblical nativity. We are presented with a sweeping vision of snow covered earth, and it is in this lonely setting that Rossetti unashamedly brings to us to view her Christ. She beautifully combines the familiar wintery scenery with the unfamiliar and astounding incomprehensibility of God becoming man.

The earnest last stanza ends the poem with a contemplation of our human incapacity to adequately give in response to the gift given to us. This is followed by a statement of the utmost importance – it’s not a throwaway line, and it’s certainly not a line that can be sung with ease: "yet what I can I give Him: give my heart". The fact that the poem takes the form of a carol forces this assertion on us through the act of perfmance. This is not just the distant conviction of a pious Victorian woman, but a declaration that we are asked to take as our own, to sing with conviction. 

It's sad that for many, contact with Rossetti’s poetry is only a yearly tradition, brought out each Christmas to be sung a few times then returned to the attic with the baubles and fairy lights. But even if this contact is brief, I'm glad it exists at all, because the real value of carols lies in their ability to make the poetics of human experience accessible. While many children will probably screw their faces in disgust at the idea of a ‘poem’, most will eagerly join in with an enthusiastic rendition of a Christmas carol. So in a way we've all unwittingly been fed poetry since childhood, a practice for which I'm contiually grateful.