! The Week Between Christmas And New Year

These are the strange and dull and heavy days (in the Northern Hemisphere at least – we seldom spare a thought for what ordeal our brothers and sisters, basking in the summer sun are passing through in mind…) For children, these are precious days, of course – waking each morning to the knowledge of new toys— (premature, by orthodox tradition – a birth, of course, but not yet the presents that are due to celebrate the Epiphany, the showing-forth of Love Itself) but are there other gifts which grown-ups have not found, buried in the garden soil, the frozen fields? For it seems this week, as if the earth and nature are caught up in some mighty pull as this great globe itself rounds some vast narrow bend and we with it; as if we are nature, earth as well: aroused by some peremptory alarm clock at some ungodly, godly hour, to help push up the snowdrops from their roots and all other things that must be stirring in the earth to feed and flower. Some esoterics say that these seven days are rich with some strange octave in the mind whose qualities are sensed within our music’s scale: some universal starting power; reluctance; recovery; faintheartedness; a sunny strength; need for authority; yearning for completeness – these, they say, are to be lived through in the mind; these to be lightly seen and sung in heart; best, in these over-eaten days, to participate in joyous activities in company.. Others whose star is in the East look for a sequence of twelve days of Christmas: wisdom has set out from Persian lands afar on its journey to acknowledge new-born love; some old order gathered in the safe sheepfold of strict law knowing in its wisdom, it’s now time – the law known and secure - to learn the new-born testament of love; All this, buried in the Christmas tree’s root and branch, the holly and the mistletoe, the alert, fierce robin sitting on a needful spade, the angel (wondering if it still has a place in our hearts, but knowing the powers that its wand may never lose) In these strange and dull and heavy days all this, all these, the presents yet to find, we could not make or buy; lie wrapped in mind.