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by candlelight with seasonal music playing in the
background, our children loved it, and so did we. we got bundled up, closed the door to our little
As a teen, I was introduced to Dylan Thomas’s A
Child’s Christmas in Whales, and it was destined
to become one of our family
traditions. In the story, when
the day comes to a close,
the main character recounts:
“Looking through my
bedroom window, out into the
moonlight and the unending
smoke-colored snow, I could
see the lights in the windows
of all the other houses on
our hill and hear the music
rising from them up the long,
steady falling night. I turned
the gas down, I got into bed. I
said some words to the close
and holy darkness, and then
I slept.”
Times have changed for so many of us,
and simplification is taking the lead. Now, Rex
and I rejoice by having a few candles burning,
some pretty lights around the windows, and a few
boughs of evergreens, branches that we salvage
from the woods after the storms. These we adorn
with treasured decorations and pine cones. We
no longer get a cut tree, or cut one down from
the forest. We did that one time when we lived in
Victoria, British Columbia, right after we were
married. It was close to Christmas, and we thought
we should have a tree, but didn’t want to buy one
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because of the expense. The forest beckoned, and
cabin, and headed out to find a tree. It was freezing
cold, and the snow was higher than we’d expected,
so walking became problematic. And most of the
trees in the forest were fully
grown. Then we came upon a
very small tree in a clearing,
no more than three feet high,
a baby. Intuition warned us to
not proceed, but we overrode
that wisdom. Cutting it down
felt like we’d committed a
sacrilege. We carried the
tree home, guilt weighing
heavier upon our hearts
than the surprising weight
of the little tree. We knew
we’d taken something that
was not meant to be taken,
something that didn’t belong
to us. Still, the tree couldn’t
just be discarded, so we put
it up inside, hung a few homemade decorations
on its branches, but we could never enjoy it. That
experience was a defining moment that marked the
beginning of our new awareness of the sacredness
of life.
In 2012, the Winter Solstice finally brought a close
to the incessant theories about what was going to
happen on December 21st. We saw that the end
of the world did in fact not come, although there
was a great deal of speculation and expanded
consciousness taking place. Collectively, I feel the