‘The Gift of Kindness,’ Hilton Head Island barkeep’s Christmas poem for 2021
Chris Wagner, a Hilton Head Islander who started writing a Christmas poem years ago for his fishing buddies, has shared his 2021 offering, hoping to spread cheer through the holidays.
As this year closes, COVID, both delta and omicron, is still waging war on our collective health and wellbeing. Tornadoes have ravaged the heartland. Politics have divided us, rendering civil conversation among opposites a rarity.
Wagner reminds us: “A kind word costs you nothing.”
The poem tradition started, as The Island Packet reported last year, “when the longtime bartender at the Crazy Crab restaurant in Harbour Town decided to send his friends something more personal than a Christmas card.”
“For the first few years I merely wrote new lyrics to the traditional songs for Christmas for my fishing buddies,” he said. “Later the works focused on other issues that I thought important or entertaining.
“Many of the words and ideas I have written have come from books I have read, greeting cards I have browsed through or jokes I have heard in my 30-plus years of bartending,” he said.
The Island Packet printed his “best fishes” Christmas poems for many years. In 2019, he put them together in a book, “Island and Sea, Christmas and Me: A Collection of Hilton Head Poems,” with artwork and design by Mary Trostle Design.
Here is his poem for 2021:
The gift of kindness
Which quality of mankind
Is better than the rest?
I think that acts of kindness
Would have to be the best.
We were born to live together
To prosper and survive,
Kindness is the cornerstone
Of enriching all our lives.
It’s the basis of religion
It’s a strength to conquer force.
A kind deed never has regrets
Or feelings of remorse.
To understand what kind is
You must understand the pain,
The sadness and the sorrow
When nothing else remains.
Stop suffering with kindness,
Help the weak and the oppressed.
When hardships disappear you’ll end
That both of you are blessed.
Yes, the joy it brings is twofold
That’s what kindness is about,
It brings a smile to the needy
And to those who help them out.
Kindness is contagious
You give like others gave.
The joy of kindness multiplies,
A ripple starts a wave.
A kind word costs you nothing
A kind deed can be free.
Sometimes the simplest things in life
Are just what someone needs.
Compassion, faith, and love
Are riches of this treasure,
Along with wealth and happiness
You can’t count or you can’t measure.
Be kind to everybody…
To every color, to every race,
Spread the sanctity of kindness
To make the world a better place.
If your heart would be a garden
Your thoughts would be its roots.
A kind word is a flower
And a kind deed is its fruit.
I’ve always pictured heaven
As nothing else but kind,
This constant thought enlightens me
And brings me peace of mind.
Bless all of us this Christmas
And every other day,
Let Kindness be your special gift
On top of Santa’s sleigh.