5 Good Christmas Poems for Adults and Older Teenagers

These holiday classics are ideal for readers who have outgrown St. Nick and visions of sugarplums

Winter at the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Cambridge, Mass. / Library of Congress

You know more Christmas poems than you think you do. Even if you don’t observe the holiday, you’ve probably absorbed some of the words to popular carols by hearing them at the mall, on television, or elsewhere. And the lyrics to most carols consist of short rhyming poems by writers who have ranged from Isaac Watts (“Joy to the World”) to Irving Berlin (“White Christmas”).

But many of the season’s best poems haven’t inspired a holiday chart-topper . Here are five worth seeking out, only one associated with a well-known carol, for adults or older teenagers.

1 “Christmas Trees: A Christmas Circular Letter” by Robert Frost

A country-dweller debates whether to sell his evergreens to a city sharpie who undervalues them in a wistful poem much longer than Frost’s better-known “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (in itself a seasonal, though not Christmas, poem). Some critics see the trees in “Christmas Trees” as a metaphor for poetry, which is similarly undervalued.

2 “Christmas Bells” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow