This Christmas poem is all about an “idiom.” In case you don’t know, an idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the words used. For example, to “kick the bucket” means to die, and to “let the cat out of the bag” means to reveal a secret. If you were just learning English, you might not be able to decipher the meanings of these expressions and would need to look them up or have someone explain them to you.

Many times, I will take a common idiom and base a poem around the fact that it might have multiple meanings; both the literal meaning of the words and the actual meaning of the expression.

In this poem, the idiom I used is the very last line of the poem, and the humor is in the fact that it has two different meanings, depending on how you look at it.

If you would like to read more poems that use common idioms, have a look at the “Poems by Poetic Technique” page on poetry4kids.com.

Sleeping Santa

I woke this Christmas morning

It seems he was exhausted

He made it to our fireplace,

And there he slumbered soundly.

My puppy started barking.

He didn’t feel me shake him.

—Kenn Nesbitt