"A Feel In The Chris'mas-Air" captures the bittersweet sensation that creeps in every Christmas season — a nameless ache that sits alongside appetite, energy, and the joy of watching children's flushed, excited faces. The speaker tries to pin down the feeling: is it the toy drums, the whistles, the blaring horns? He cannot quite locate it. What Riley evokes so precisely is the way festive happiness carries within it a quiet, unresolvable sadness that no amount of good cheer can fully chase away.

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"Das Krist Kindel" opens on a solitary December evening, a narrator dozing by a crackling fire while winter prowls outside. Through curling cigar smoke, a vision unfolds: a jolly frost-haired figure conjures a miniature stage where tiny children gather in wonder around a glowing baby boy in straw. The scene deepens into a reverent Nativity, complete with gifts of frankincense and myrrh and a soaring prayer over Galilee, before the dream dissolves as a clock proclaims Christmas has arrived.

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"Chrismus On The Plantation" is a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar set on a gloomy Christmas Eve when a struggling plantation master tells his formerly enslaved workers he can no longer pay them and must sell the land. Before despair can settle, a man named old Ben steps forward and refuses to abandon the man who once held them in bondage — not out of submission, but out of fierce communal loyalty. His impassioned speech transforms grief into collective resolve, and a somber day turns unexpectedly bright.

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"Christmas" by Paul Laurence Dunbar crackles with the energy of a holiday gathering in full swing — fiddles playing, fires roaring, and a table heavy with possum and warm drinks. The speaker urges everyone to dance and feast through the cold night, brushing off biting frost and whistling winds with laughter and togetherness. Through vivid dialect verse, Dunbar captures a specific, joyful African American holiday scene where Mammy nearly faints from the smell of something baking, and the whole community presses in, hungry and alive.

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"Chrismus Is A-comin'" captures the infectious excitement of Christmas building through winter frost and cold nights. Dunbar's speaker — a mother watching her sleeping child, nicknamed "my little lammy" — brims with secret joy over the gifts and celebrations she has planned. Through vivid dialect verse, the poem layers seasonal imagery of snow, banjo music, dancing, and holiday feasting against the chill, insisting that the coming week belongs entirely to the community celebrating together.

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"A Christmas Folksong" by Paul Laurence Dunbar opens on a mild, snowless Christmas Eve thick with damp air and foreboding. The speaker watches others dance, court, and feast, but finds no comfort in the season — only loss. Loved ones named Allen, Marfy, Ca'line, John, and Susie are gone, taken in a springlike Christmas past that brought death instead of cheer. Now, with winter absent and the churchyard full, the speaker warns that this green Christmas carries a curse, and that many more will soon share the grief.

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"Daddy's Lost the Job He Had" is a poem told in the voice of a child just shy of eight years old, whose father has lost his driving job and now earns fifty cents a day carrying an advertising sign. With Christmas approaching, the narrator and younger sister Bess quietly set aside their wishes for a tree and candy, watching their mother fret over rent, dwindling flour, and coal sifted twice to stretch it further. The poem captures the quiet dignity of a family under pressure, as the children pray in secret for their father's luck to turn.

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"About the Tide of Christmas" is a romantic poem in which a lovestruck speaker urges his own heart to take courage through the cold and quiet of the Christmas season. Each stanza circles around the enchanting Marjory — dancing in fur, lilting like spring, smiling through winter's gloom — as the speaker dares to hope she might dance, sing, and one day say love's "yes" to him. The poem builds with warmth and gentle longing toward a tender, hopeful declaration.

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"A Pathetic Christmas Poem" delivers a sharp comic twist on the classic Christmas redemption story. A burglar breaks into a grand banker's mansion on a snowy night, only to be met by a small child who pleads with him to reform his life and think of his family. The burglar solemnly promises to turn over a new leaf — and keeps his word, in the most cynically hilarious way imaginable. The poem skewers Victorian sentimentality with a perfectly timed punchline.

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"A Rhyme For Christmas" is a playful poem built around one delightfully impossible challenge: finding a true rhyme for the word "Christmas." The speaker wrestles aloud with sounds, syllables, and false leads — dismissing "isthmus" with comic indignation — while longing for the poet Robert Browning, whose legendary verbal dexterity might just crack the puzzle. The poem crackles with self-aware humor, mock frustration, and a linguist's glee, turning a simple seasonal dilemma into an exuberant, spiraling performance of wordplay and wit.

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