211220 christmas
Dec. 20
Christmas - I like the creche, nativity scene. manger scene - this last was what we called it at home. I love the romance of the wise people, the shepherds who showed up, the animals in the stable, the yellow hay and the yellow star and the angel. I love the poem, The Oxen, by Hardy, its childish magic. * They don't go to the barn and see, because that would break the magic of their imagining.
" Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so. "
*****
I love to do the stockings too, find the small treasures, trivial, personal, mostly second-hand - that's where you find the most interesting things - watch the faces as the others discover their trove. I do one for myself, too, since my mother stopped doing one for me. Tamar sometimes slips something in it and that makes a good surprise. In our own home, K's and mine, we began Christmas morning with Jesus' stocking, into which we each placed a word-card for a gift: peace, love, forgiveness, understanding, hope; before we opened our own stockings. I developed this tradition from the words the bishop says in his sermon in the movie, The Bishop's Wife. I loved to decorate the house with all the almost-forgotten things, wrapped carefully in the Christmas boxes, to be taken out in December and put about the house, in the excitement and anticipation of the holiday.
I abandoned these joys almost without a thought, to come to Quebec last year, and again this year we will be just we two here on the hill. But I know that Tamar has her own favorite baubles and bits that she will enjoy putting out, and she will embrace the opportunity to do the stockings all on her own. I remember that the first few Christmases after our children were born, we were still all gathering at my parents' home for the day. Stockings were opened there and the gifts and we all shared Christmas dinner preparation and sat down together for the feast. In a few years this tradition went the way of generations growing up, and us children took Christmas home and my parents came to us, by turns, on the day. There were only three young families in Toronto by then. My other two brothers and their families were in Vancouver and Saskatchewan, making new traditions on their own.
This was an interesting transition of tradition, both when I separated from my parents' home and when my own children began to miss Christmas at home, as they found new loves with whom to celebrate. There is always the tug between the two senior familial homes and the newly partnered young people's home. My family of origin had no struggle, since my grandparents, and all the aunts and uncles, were in Vancouver and England. and we never saw them at Christmas. We have all experienced this transition, however, in Christmas rituals and other holidays, as we ourselves reached adulthood and began to make our own traditions and as our children left the nest to invent new rituals with their friends and new young families.
I wish you all a happy holiday. Remember the solstice. It has been a important day for our species for millennia, to hope, to call for sun-return, to trust the earth and sun to turn and draw us forward to another summer warmth. It is doubtless one of the reasons Christmas was plunked down in the month of December, so that pagan solstice celebrations could be subsumed in the new Christianity. This doesn't discredit Christmas - Jesus was a brilliant teacher and remains so today, regardless of the religious legacy you wish to embrace. He brings comfort and joy to much of the world at Christmas, in spite of the consumer-driven trappings. To gather together (with covid in mind, perhaps virtually and spiritually instead of physically) and perform rituals from family traditions, eat delicious food, light candles, and bring in bits of winter nature, is a good thing at this time of the year when it is at its darkest.
Keep well.
Mumma Yaga
If you get a chance and you like old movies, watch The Holly and the Ivy. It is my favorite Christmas movie, with Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson.
* Thomas Hardy, The Oxen, 1915
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53215/the-oxen-56d232503c32d
** The Bishop's Wife, 1947
After reading this entry in late December, we enjoyed Bishop's Wife. We didn't get around to The Holly and the Ivy this year. Maybe next. Hope you enjoyed your favourite films this season!
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