Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child

Lady dear, if Fairies may 
For a moment lay aside 
Cunning tricks and elfish play, 
’Tis at happy Christmas-tide.

We have heard the children say— 
Gentle children, whom we love— 
Long ago, on Christmas Day, 
Came a message from above.

Still, as Christmas-tide comes round, 
They remember it again— 
Echo still the joyful sound 
“Peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Yet the hearts must childlike be 
Where such heavenly guests abide: 
Unto children, in their glee, 
All the year is Christmas-tide!

Thus, forgetting tricks and play 
For a moment, Lady dear, 
We would wish you, if we may, 
Merry Christmas, glad New Year!

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 21, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child” first appeared as an afterpiece to Lewis Carroll’s then-manuscript, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan, 1865), and later appeared as a foreword in the published book. Morton N. Cohen, a biographer of Lewis Carroll, wrote in his article “Christmas with Lewis Carroll,” published in the New York Times, December 20, 1981 (Section 6, Page 25) “Inscribing it as ‘A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer Day,’ Dodgson presented the booklet in 1864 to Alice Liddell, who obviously had inspired the main character in the story he first called ‘Alice’s Adventure Under Ground.’ It was one of the most enchanting, and subsequently one of the most expensive, Christmas gifts a child ever received. (In 1928, when she was 76 and widowed, Alice sold the manuscript to A. W. S. Rosenbach, an American antiquarian book dealer, for more than $75,000; since then, its worth has at least quadrupled.)”