Lawrence Hall
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.
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