Thursday, December 24, 2020

The Turning of the Year - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Turning of the Year

 

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage…There was skating on the moat… while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector’s face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening.

 

T. H. White, The Once and Future King

 

From the first Sunday in Advent to Plough (or Plow) Monday after the Feast of the Epiphany we live within the turning of the year.

 

Advent begins the new liturgical year with final harvest activities and customs giving way to preparing spiritually and, through the Incarnation, physically for Christmas. Christmas itself begins at midnight on the 24th of December and concludes with the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January. In England the first Monday after the Epiphany is Plough Monday, when, by tradition, the soil is turned in anticipation of spring, blending the leaf-mould into the soil, enriching it, and becoming part of it.

 

The unhappy Puritans banned Christmas in the English-speaking world for generations, and when it was restored in the 19th century it was an odd  Dickens sort of thing, amusing but pale, not based in the faith or in the annual cycle of nature given to this world by God. The cliché that we must put Christ back into Christmas is inverted; it is the Mass – religious observance – that needs putting back into Christmas, not more noise.

 

Christmas has long been discussed, but not amended, for the tension, unhappiness, and even near-hysteria which attends it – compulsive shopping and forced merriment in which people who don’t much care for each other for the rest of the year are made by the secular liturgies and advertisements of unreasonable expectations and closeness to despise each other.

 

A Christmas which does not end with tears and sulks and slammed doors is an unusual one, but that is the fault of Charles Dickens and his successors, and of ourselves, not of Christ.

 

But all bad things come to an end, and some of the most joyful and peaceful days fall after the 25th, when the gifts have lost their mystery but not their newness and leftover turkey is still on the menu. Even the tree seems at peace, giving us light on dark afternoons while we doze over a new book or perk up with a cup of pinon coffee from New Mexico. Visits from friends – forbidden this year - are free from any expectations other than conversations about the kids and prospects for the new year.

 

Hundreds of thousands have died this year, and the government has collapsed, all because of the New Men – and the New Women - who, unlike Sir Ector, grasp at power and ignore their duties.

 

By the grace of God a great many good, sturdy people in service to humanity are on duty through all this, health care workers from great surgeons to the nice lady who cleans up after them, police officers, firefights, and the watchers of gauges and the wielders of wrenches who keep everything going.

 

Is this, then, a time for anyone to drowse before a warm fire?

 

Well, we can only hope that all will soon be able sit in a comfortable chair and look out their own windows at the cardinals Christmas-feasting at the feeder, and maybe a squirrel loping across the frost for its share of seeds, and with no shopping to be accomplished and no work for a day or two, and no immediate obligations except tending the fire.

 

The year is turning, and for a day or two we may quietly enjoy the mystery.

 

-30-

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