Christmas, as we know it today, and the vast amount of literature it has spawned are fairly recent cultural phenomena. To begin with, it is a Christian holiday clearly related, in the countries of the northern hemisphere, with the winter solstice and the survival of ancient religious rites. From the year 200 of our era, the Church begins to place the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in the last days of December, although it is Pope Liberio, in 354, who finally decrees the 25th as the official date. The celebration coincides, however, with other similar pagan festivities of the same solstice from which it has taken many characteristics. The Romans, for example, glorified that same day the Natalis Solis Invicti or Birth of the unconquered Sun, associated with the birth of the god Apollo. The Germans and also the Scandinavians celebrated that day the birth of Frey, the Norse god of the rising sun, rain and fertility. (At those festivities they decorated an evergreen tree, which represented the Universe, a custom that became the Christmas tree when Christianity arrived in Northern Europe. The Portal of Bethlehem, however, is much more modern and it is believed that Francisco de Asís conceived it).
Among the literary expressions that celebrate Christmas, perhaps one of the oldest is the Auto de los Reyes Magos, written in Toledo probably in the 12th century. But it is from the Renaissance when educated poets begin to feel special interest in the symbolic values of this Christian holiday. Lope de Vega wrote a considerable number of Christmas poems, such as "Las pajas del manger". Juan de la Cruz composed a «Romance of birth». But Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Juan Ramón Jiménez or Federico García Lorca (with his memorable "Christmas on the Hudson") were also attracted by the lyrical occasion that Christmas offered. The same thing happened to the Englishman Robert Frost, the Welshman Dylan Thomas, the Brazilian João Guimarães Rosa or, among many, the Russian-American Joseph Brodsky. (Guimarães Rosa wrote a delicious collection of poems dedicated to the most humble figures of Portal: the donkey and the ox, whose only translation into Spanish is due to two Canarian poets: Francisco León and Alejandro Krawietz. Hoffmann's "The Nutcracker" is very famous , Rilke's Christmas poems (such as "Advent") or Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, written before he died in a Nazi concentration camp.The list is endless.
In Spain, until the arrival of the Generation of '50 (apart, naturally, from Christmas carols), Christmas-themed poetry continued to enjoy good roots in the field of literature. Famous are the anthologies of birth poems in which the well-known poets of the Generation of '27 participated and, a little later, those of the so-called First Postwar Generation. With the Generation of 50 and the slow opening of the Franco dictatorship, on the other hand, Christmas, its themes and symbols have been disappearing from the interests of contemporary poets.
In relation to the latter, «Mirra (Christmas Poems)», published by Ediciones del Pampalino, is an anomalous book. In this publication, Christmas, the tree, the Portal de Belén, its secondary figures, such as the "caganer", or its more abstract and intellectual aspects are portrayed here in great depth and almost always from a non-denominational or non-denominational perspective. , if you prefer, and even from a clearly critical perspective.
It is one of the few collective books belonging to the secular tradition of Christmas compositions published in Spain in recent decades and in its pages we will find poems by Alejandro Krawietz, Juan Fuentes, Isidro Hernández, Manuel Martins, Régulo Hernández, Francisco León, Sergio Barreto, Old José Mosegue or Juan Noyes Kuehn Cole. The circulation consists of 300 copies, numbered and sewn by hand.