The Ghost of Christmas Verse

blog_angell4The New York Times offers a meditation on and an announcement of the triumphant return of the New Yorker‘s usually annual holiday poem, “Greetings, Friends!” The page of cheerful verse has dropped the names of the year’s notable characters (this year includes Ben Bernake, Bristol Palin, Lebron James and Christian Bale, among many more) since 1932, when the magazine was still under the stewardship of founder HW Ross, a primer about whom appeared in the STOP SMILING Downfall of American Publishing Issue; New Yorker baseball writer and editor Roger Angell has scribed the piece since 1976, but has put the poem on hiatus since 1998 for lack of inspiration.