My favorite Christmas poem

...is by the English writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), the same Thomas Hardy who gave us such novels as The Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Far From the Madding Crowd. Please note that I still use the Oxford comma and I probably always will. The poem is entitled "The Oxen":

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

(end of poem)

You can have Clement Clark Moore and his "A Visit From Saint Nicholas". I'll take Thomas Hardy's poem every time Christmas Eve rolls around.