Christmas

Stefania Shukhov

 "Oh, the joy of waking, and remembering at once that it was Christmas morning. It was still only half-light, but because of the white radiance of the snow there was a brightness in her room, and Fanny could see perfectly well. She scrambled from her bed, and ran to the window and looked outside, but she could see nothing for the ferns and whorls and delicate tracery of rime on the inside of the pane. She touched her finger to it and it burned with the cold, and the air was cold, too, so that she dived at once back into her bed."

 

Stanley Roy Badmin

 "The snow crunched under their feet, and everywhere, the sun caught on a million beads and drops of hoar frost and threw off a million rainbows, intensely bright and glittering. On the gate hung a spider's web, infinitely delicate, and stiff as frozen lace, with the spider itself frozen in the heart of it. And on the hedges and trees, the fences and posts, were the seams of snow. By the lych-gate, there was a robin on a yew branch, and in the way of robins, it kept company beside them, hop-hop, half a yard away over the snow, its breast red as a soldier's coat, its eye bead-bright." 

 

 

Monique Valdeneige

 

"Last night, the snow fell, and I began to remember...when I was nine years old, and the snow lay like a goose-down quilt over the earth, and I walked across the churchyard, through the deep, soft drifts, to listen to my Father say evensong, by the light of the candles.

I remember the carol singers coming with their lanterns across the snow...and in the kitchen the sweet rich smells and the dark, dark fruit in the china bowl, and the cat on a cushion and a lemon rolling onto the stone-flagged floor.

...I remember. For that was the last country Christmas...And after that, it seemed, I left behind my childhood, that magic time, set within a circle and lit from within, so that the memory of it, coming to me down all the years, is as golden as the light of a lantern falling across the snow."

Susan Hill, "Lanterns Across the Snow"

 

 

Waldemar Fink

 

This made me wonder how much our enjoyment of Christmas comes from memories of past years, or from our connection to all the Christmases that came before - a sense of history inhabiting, drawing us forward while at the same time reminding us of what is gone, or what we once were.

 

I would write so much more, and hope to, but there's nowhere to escape to where I can get my thoughts together to write. As a good friend tells me, and she should know, sometimes the best we can do is to "keep our hand in" - or do the little bits we are able, until the day comes when we can do more. I'm holding to that theory. A little bit now and then is better than waiting for the right conditions that might never come.