Christmas
"Christmas" is a poem in which a child speaks to their mother, refusing to accept Christmas sweets knowing they are produced through the suffering of enslaved people. Chandler draws a sharp contrast between the joyful nativity story — angels singing of peace and goodwill — and the brutal reality of slavery: forced labour under the lash, families torn apart, and bodies broken in the heat. The poem builds to a quiet moral act of refusal, as the child refuses to benefit from a system built on chains and suffering.
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