Centenarian Agnes Andreasen shares her 30th Christmas poem

Hordville native has been writing holiday poetry for 3 decades

  • Agnes Andreasen, a native of Hordville, celebrated her 100th birthday in May, and this year wrote her 30th Christmas poem to family and friends. She was kind enough to allow ANR to share it with our readers.
    Agnes Andreasen, a native of Hordville, celebrated her 100th birthday in May, and this year wrote her 30th Christmas poem to family and friends. She was kind enough to allow ANR to share it with our readers.

    From her very first Christmas poem shared with family and friends and talking about events on her Hordville farm in 1995, until this year, in which she celebrated her 100th birthday, Hordville native Agnes Andreasen has been waxing poetic each Christmas season for 30 years now. 
    In a 2023 ANR interview about her annual Christmas poems, Andreasen revealed that first Christmas poem was written more out of convenience than anything else, but it caught on. 
    “Instead of writing every card separately, I just make up a poem to send to everybody,” Andreasen explained in 2023. “I’ve been doing that since 1995, so it’s been a little while, but I guess the first one I made, I looked at it and I read it to my husband and I said ‘Should we use it?’ and he says, ‘Send it!’”
    Andreasen said those early poems, based on the meter and style of Clement Moore’s “T’was the Night Before Christmas,” often shared details of life on the farm over the past year with her late husband, Bernie. 
    Now living in an assisted living facility in Grand Island, Andreasen has fewer big life events to talk about in her poems, so she sometimes shares stories of things that happened in the lives of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 
    This year, however, she had something monumental to focus on – turning 100-years-old last May 25. 
    “This was a special year to enjoy in the month of May. An occasion known as my one hundredth birthday,” Andreasen wrote in this year’s poem, adding in a later stanza, “My health is good for the shape I’m in except one thing gives me woes. And that thing I have to admit is a couple of sore toes.”
    Andreasen concluded this year’s poem with, “It’s time to bring this to a close and once again I’ll say ‘Have a wonderful Christmas – Enjoy the day.’” 
    ANR wishes the very same to Agnes and her family and to all of our readers.