Winter Light

I was going to write a deep, thought-provoking post today, but then I thought, Naaah, it's Christmas time. It's supposed to be about being jolly, and holly, and other things ending in -olly. (That's a shameless quote from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. Thank you, Sir Terry.) So I decided to think about Christmassy things instead.

Early this morning, I dreamt that I had had to move to Australia quite suddenly. And as we were carrying things into our house there, I felt really disoriented, because I had no idea where anything was in that town, or how things are done Down Under - I woke up still thinking I should google the place, so I could at least see on a map of Australia where I was and then perhaps find the nearest grocery store. Anyway, the point of my telling you this: I got to thinking: I don't know that I would like being Down Under for Christmas. It would seem really weird - kind of wrong - to have Christmas in the middle of summer. Christmas needs darkness, and cold, and winter, at least for this Northerner it does.

Part of the fun and atmosphere of the Christmas celebration is the lights, and they need darkness to set them off. This year we put up perhaps the charlie-browniest of Charlie-Brown-trees ever (Love it. It came from the woods behind our house.). And for all its sad, thin branches, once the lights were on, it was transformed. It's beautiful. The light shines in the darkness - that's what Christmas is all about, isn't it?

And then there's winter sunlight. It has a completely different quality about it than sunlight at the other times of the year. Some years ago, I was looking at an art book, in which the author was demonstrating how to turn a summer photo of a wooded landscape into a snow scene. But the problem was that what she was doing didn't work. The author lived somewhere south, might have been Southern California, and by her own admission had never really seen a snowy landscape. The snow was painted well enough, with blue shadows and all, but the angle of the light was all wrong. She just kept the shadows cast by the sun in her southern-latitudes photo, but a sun that high would never produce snowy weather; her summer-sun snow painting felt really bizarre to me. A winter scene in the Northern latitudes is determined more by the angle of the light than by the snow lying on the ground. See? Those trees are most emphatically winter trees, sitting on my kitchen counter with the winter noon sun shining on them through my south-facing window.

I love winter light, the low, slanted noon sunlight falling through my window, and the sparkling, twinkling, warm light of candles and Christmas trees at night. And soon, very soon, the light will turn, and all will gradually become brighter again. The sun will rise in the morning when I need to get up, and then long before I need to get up (and I will grumble at it then), and the darkness will be, yet again, banished to its short night time. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not prevail.

Incidentally, none of this means that if any of you Kiwis or Ozzies wanted to invite me for Christmas (and pay the airfare), I'd turn down the invitation. I might not want to move Down Under, but I'd love to come for a visit!

Life, the Universe, and Light in the Darkness. Winter will pass soon enough.

Peace On Earth

A miracle occurred: both our cats were sitting on back of the same couch, within a few inches of each other, without hissing at, batting, or chasing the other. Peace on earth, goodwill to cats! It must be Christmas.

Oh, pardon me - am I not being politically correct here? Okay, let me rephrase that: It must be The Holidays. Wait - which ones? Easter? Or Victoria Day? Maybe Valentine's - love and romance in the air... Pfffft. That just doesn't cut it.

You see, I'm talking about Christmas here. Not wimpy, wishy-washy, generic culturally neutered "holidays". I celebrate Christmas, the Christian feast, as my family has done for I-don't-know-how-many generations. Not only that, I'm fully aware and appreciative of the fact that a great many of its traditions that I hold dear have their origins in the pagan culture of my long-ago Germanic ancestors. I'm quite sure that the Christmas tree, for example, started out as some kind of fertility symbol: in the darkest time of the year people brought the evergreen tree into the house, hung apples and other gifts onto its boughs, and lit candles to show that the light would, indeed, return, and trees would once again bear leaf and fruit. (That's my own theory; I don't have any actual historic information to back this up - but it just makes sense to me, you know?) Christmas is deeply rooted in traditions of my faith, of my culture, of what generations upon generations of those who have gone before celebrated in similar or else very different ways.

I celebrate Christmas, not Hanukkah (as I'm not Jewish, more's the pity), or Kwanzaa (being of a rather pale complexion), or any other of the wonderful feasts that are being celebrated at this time of year by others. There is no disrespect to other cultures, other traditions, other faiths, in wishing someone a Merry Christmas. If that's what you celebrate, of course. If your biggest holiday is Ramadan, then I wish you a very happy one of those, indeed, and I hope you enjoy your traditions as much as I revel in mine. And I would love to hear what it means to you, and what the traditions that go with it are meant to symbolize.

You see, I don't know anything about Ramadan, or about Kwanzaa, and only a little bit about Hanukkah. But I do know a lot about Christmas, and I love everything it stands for. It's no accident that we celebrate this holiday right around the time of Winter Solstice. The message of the birth of the Christ Child fits extremely well into that setting: at the darkest time of year, in the darkest hour of humanity, light came. Just one tiny speck of light, just one tiny human infant - but it turned the tide. No longer is the darkness paramount, but the light once again returns. Light, and peace.

Peace on earth, goodwill to men - or, in other words, human beings actually practising peacefulness towards each other, rather than engaging in the malevolence that so often wants to assert itself in our dealings with others, particularly those of another complexion, faith or culture. That's what Christmas is about.

And today, even two black cats, with seven legs between them, were able to share the back of the couch in a modicum of peacefulness.

Life, the Universe, and Peace on Earth. Merry Christmas!

The Pleasure of Socks

Steve got socks. Christmas socks, at that. A friend just gave them to me for a Christmas tree decoration; they are a lovely red-and-white striped knit with red heels and toes, and they just happen to be a perfect fit for Steve. Sorry, Christmas Tree, stuffed bears get priority.

A nice pair of socks really is a beautiful thing. Nothing says "comfort" like a cozy pair of fluffy socks. And, on the other hand, nothing is as uncomfortable as clammy wet socks. Brrrrr. I hear that keeping your socks dry is absolutely crucial if you're going to survive long marches, say, in the military. I'd better mention it to Steve, just in case he was thinking of enlisting.

My favourite every-day kinds of socks are plain cotton ones, in a medium-weight knit. For really cold weather, or inside hiking or snow boots, thick woolly socks over top of the cotton ones are the best (a red stripe around the cuff is optional). And then for wearing inside nicer shoes, I have thin black socks, probably with a dash of nylon; but those kind are starting to leave the realm of sockishness and move over into stockingland. So I'm not sure they qualify for this post. Anyway, a really good pair of socks is a pleasure (Professor Dumbledore would tell you the same).

Now, I wonder if I should make Steve a toque to go with his socks - something in a Santa style, perhaps? But I don't know if I have any red yarn of the required weight available. Or the time to do any knitting right now. Also, his ears look warm enough right now, so he'll probably be okay, don't you think? He doesn't go playing in the snow very often, anyway. For now, he might as well just enjoy his socks.

Life, the Universe, and the Pleasure of Socks. Every bear should have a pair of his own.

Christmas Cookies

I finally got around to baking Christmas cookies yesterday. There were any number of other things that were also on my "must do" list, but the cookies catapulted to the top. One must have one's priorities. What's the big deal about cookies, you ask? Oh, simply that, without them, it wouldn't be Christmas.

Well, okay - of course it would be Christmas, but it wouldn't feel right. Cookies are among the half a dozen or so Christmas essentials (the others being a Christmas tree of some kind, music, candles, and presents of sorts - homemade or no-cost are just as good as money-spending ones). Christmas celebrations are all about traditions, connecting with the past. So my cookies, they have history. Well, not the individual ones, of course, but the kinds of cookies I make. They're the kind my mother made, and my grandmother, and her mother, and her mother... I have some special carved cookie moulds that are over a hundred years old; they used to belong to my great-grandfather's sister-in-law. Among my cookie cutters are ones that have been in a family since at least my mother; I remember using them as a child. One of the favourites was always the little choo-choo train with coal tender and cars; we used to argue about who got to use it first. And then I added to the collection, myself - there's a little donkey cookie cutter I bought at the Christmas market in Stuttgart five years ago, and one that's a car, sort of like a new beetle, which tells you right there it's not an antique.

The thing about these recipes is that they're very specifically Christmas cookies; never, at any other time of the year, would you make these cookies. The recipes were developed to use the most special, rare ingredients - literally 'rich' recipes, because you couldn't afford them any other time. They're loaded with butter, sugar, white flour (as opposed to the coarse whole-grain flour you'd bake your bread from year-round), eggs, almonds - all foodstuffs that were carefully rationed, in the days when there was some connection between the difficulty of producing a food and its cost. (Take butter, for example: it takes about a quart of cream to make less than a pound of butter; and a lot of milk to get a quart of cream. So a recipe that calls for half a pound of butter - well, that takes huge amounts of milk to get there.) And the spices that go into Christmas cookies are almost all exotics, as far as Europeans are concerned. Vanilla, lemon and orange peel, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, star anise -   from India, China, the Spice Islands, rare and costly.

Today, all these foods are commonplace, and cheap. I eat butter every day, and white flour and sugar are so ubiquitous in our diet that it takes an effort to avoid them. As for the "exotic" spices, they tend to be cheaper and easier to get a hold of than anything that might be grown locally. But the cookies are still special, even today. Because what is rare and in short supply today is time - the sheer amount of time and effort that goes into making these things. Cutting cookies from a sheet of rolled dough takes much longer than dishing out the dough by the spoonful onto a cookie sheet, and normally, during the course of the year, I would never stand at the counter carefully brushing icing onto five dozen cinnamon stars - it takes far too long. But for Christmas, it's worth it. And the labour of making the cookies becomes part of the tradition. I have very fond memories of cookie making as a child, and my own kids now carry on in the same vein. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Life, the Universe, and Christmas Cookies. Come on over for a visit, we're happy to share!

Forgotten Ornament

Yesterday being the tenth day of Christmas, I thought it was time to take down the Christmas decorations. Into the box went the Tyrolean carved Holy Family, the Swedish straw mobile, the raffia angel a friend made ten years ago, the ceramic church a neighbour gave me some years before that, the prosaically fake pine advent wreath, and all the Christmas tree ornaments. Lights, tinsel garlands, lots and lots of stars, a small wooden rocking horse - I thought I had got them all down. So I unscrewed the tree from the holder, pulled it out, and started dragging it out of the house.

I got as far as the hallway, when I suddenly saw that there was one I had missed. On the lowest branch, hiding behind the trunk of the tree, was one of the medallions I made sixteen years ago. There are three of them, made of cornstarch dough and painted with acrylic paints - I believe it was a project in an art class I was taking at the time. One has a snowy church on it, one poinsettias (or maybe holly, it's not terribly clear which), and this one is a little snow man, grinning cheerfully, sticking his twig arms out into the chilly December air.

So I parked the trunk of the tree on the hallway floor, shedding some more pine needles in the process, and fished Frosty off that branch. He might not be an amazing work of art, but that doesn't mean I want him getting rained on and ruined out in the backyard behind the garage, where the spent Christmas tree will live out the next few months before it gets turned into fireplace fodder sometime next winter. And so the medallion went and joined its siblings in the decorations box, where it will live out the year inside the garage on the shelf, safe and dry, until next year's Christmas.

And I was thinking, there is something rather poignant about that little forgotten ornament. Here it was, clinging onto the last branch, almost finding a soggy end to its decorative career merely because it was refusing to let go of a Christmas tree that had lived out its time. It's a bit like the fish in my aquarium: whenever I need to do a complete water change, get all the guppies out and into a bucket so I can rinse the gravel, scrub out the algae and put nice, sparkly fresh water in the tank, it's always the cautious fish that give me the most trouble. The dumb ones, the ones that want to check out every new thing that comes along (such as a fish net), are the most easily caught, gently netted out and put in the bucket to await their newly cleaned home. It's the ones that want to cling to the old, that hide behind the rocks, and, when I take out all the rocks and plants, vanish into the murky water in the corners, that force me to chase them around the tank, probably traumatizing them horribly, before I get them out of that murk and into the situation that is, ultimately, so much better for them.

Of course, this bears no parallel to my life whatsoever. I never cling to old ideas, whinge and whine about change, hide in the murk of the old water or hang onto pine branches that are dropping needles in the hallway. Oh no, of course not.

(Incidentally, if you're wondering about that cornstarch dough the snowman medallion is made from, it's like Baker's Clay or Salt Dough, but bright white, much more finely textured, and it sparkles! It's very pretty, and makes lovely little ornaments, even without paint. Here's how:
2 c Baking Soda, 1 c Cornstarch, 1 1/4 c Water; mix soda and cornstarch, stir in water, bring to boil over medium heat, stir until it begins to thicken, remove from burner, cover with damp cloth, cool, knead. Make whatever you like out of it; dry on foil-covered cookie sheet in warm oven for 1 hr, or at room temp. for 2-3 days or longer.
Do keep whatever part you're not using covered with a dampish cloth; it surface-dries much faster than Baker's Clay. It's so finely textured it can almost pick up the pattern of your finger prints! For the medallions, I just rolled it out 1/4" [about 5mm] thick, cut out circles, dried them [or baked them, I can't remember], then painted them with ordinary acrylic paints and added a bit of glitter.)

Life, the Universe, and Forgotten Ornaments. Let's not cling to what is over.

On Christmas Trees and Nose Bags

It's Christmas Eve, which for us Germans means we have the big celebration tonight. Our Christmas customs are a blend between the German and Canadian styles. We do our present-opening on Christmas Eve, but on Christmas Day we have stockings and a big turkey dinner. And we have an Advent Wreath and light the candles on the Advent Sundays, but the Christmas tree gets put up about a week before Christmas, not secretly the day of Christmas Eve. It would be difficult to do that German-style anyway with the open floor plans we have hereabouts; you can't lock the kids out of the living room for secrecy when there's no door to lock.

Our Christmas tree came from the woods behind our house - that's another Canadian thing to do, to just get a free Christmas tree permit from the forestry department (nowadays you can just download it from the web), and go into the woods to find your own. You just have to make sure you carry that permit in your pocket, else if a Department of Forestries Official catches you, he might drag you off to the nearest lock-up and imprison you over the holidays on suspicion of trying to set up trade in Charlie Brown trees. They're coveted commodities, those trees, but residents are allowed three per household - with a permit, of course. Forestry officials are combing the Canadian woods in large numbers at this season, looking for Christmas Tree Perpetrators. You probably thought those roadblocks where the RCMP pulls you over and asks how many glasses of mulled wine you had are meant to prevent drunk driving, but in fact, they're a cover for checking for unauthorized Christmas-Tree-Transporting. RCMP and Department of Forestries are working together to prevent Dastardly Tree Crimes at this season.

Yesterday I turned on the TV, and it just so happened that my favourite Christmas movie was on. In fact, I'd already considered putting in the video I'd taped a couple of years ago to watch it (yes, I still have a VHS player. Antiquated, I know, but I'm unrepentant). But I didn't have to; they faithfully aired (cabled?) "A Child's Christmas in Wales", as they have done every Christmas the last few years. This is the version with Denholm Elliott playing the grandfather, telling his grandson of the snowy Christmasses he had when he was young ("I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six."). If you get a chance to watch it, do; it's well worth it. But if you can't get a hold of it, here is my latest discovery: Dylan Thomas himself reading his poem/story, in measured, epic tones. Denholm Elliott does it more lyrical, lilting; but you can't beat hearing it in the poet's own voice. "There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; ... and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why." I think I had better go and crochet a little nose bag for one of my children, we don't have any aunts, whinnying or not, coming to visit this year to supply the want.

Life, the Universe, and Christmas Cheer. May yours be blessed and merry.

Yorick

May I introduce Yorick? Everyone, Yorick; Yorick, Everyone. My youngest son gave him to me for my birthday, and my oldest son, when contemplating the naming of this new addition to my menagerie, said "You should call him Yorick!" Of course, he was absolutely correct. So now that you've been introduced, when someone mentions the name Yorick, you can say: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio." But that's only if you have a friend named Horatio, and he happens to be around at that moment.

It's the third Day of Christmas as I write this, and I can't remember what my true love is meant to have given me to go with the partridge in the pear tree and whatever-it-is that comes on Day Two, neither of which I received in my stocking. But that's okay. He probably wouldn't like roast partridge, anyway, and while a pear tree would be really neat to have, around here, we'd have to spray it for codling moth, which is inconvenient. (I just found out that where I live, if you have fruit trees and you're not certified as an organic grower, you're legally obligated to spray your trees. If you don't, the fruit tree police can come and chop them down and send you the bill. Ugh. I guess it makes sense, in a way- but it still rather destroys the illusion of the healthy and natural country life.) Oh, and no, I wouldn't keep the partridge as a pet, either; I believe they're about as intelligent as quail. And I have a hard enough time keeping the cats under control in the house as is; one is trying to climb on my keyboard as I type - a partridge added to the mix doesn't bear thinking of.

So now that the Christmas festivities are past, and we're all laying about, groaning from having overeaten turkey, and still overeating chocolate and brownies and cookies and pie, it's time to start thinking of the new year. I have this fantasy that I'm going to do all kinds of fascinating and productive activities in 2011 - more gardening, say. I long ago learned that most of the green-thumb genes that came from my grandmothers went to my sister, with not much left for me (another illusion down the drains). But I still enjoy grubbing around in the dirt, even if the resulting harvest is less than spectacular. And my favourites are my herbs. There is something incredibly satisfying in running out the back door while the spaghetti sauce bubbles on the stove and quickly grabbing a few sprigs of oregano, thyme, parsley and chives to add to the blend; the flavour of fresh herbs is incomparable. The turkey stuffing this year contained fresh-picked sage, and the parsley I had to dig out from under the snow where it was nicely pre-frozen.

Life, the Universe, Yorick and Parsley. Enjoy the twelve days of Christmas!