Snow at Bray Shop, a hamlet near my home. (Wiki commons photo)
I
What is it, I wondered aloud, alone
in my car, coming back from the house
of a friend, a friend who is also, now, a
colleague. Our book, together, is out. Our
friendship has not changed; will money
change it? For the better. Yes, for the better.
But, I wondered aloud...what IS it about
Christmas, the festive season, that is
so attractive, even when one has long
given up the myth of Jesus.
II
One year, it snowed before Christmas,
melted, froze again. We had to go to
Tesco for something a day or two before
the long drive north, to our Christmas
venue, a place of peace and joy with
friends and family. Not mine. No,
with mine, peace and joy fled and
hid. A real family, with love and
pudding, games and grab-bag
gifts. Gifts like that are hard to come by
but the festive season, yes, then, if ever.
But always, it seems, we long for
the close comfort of total acceptance
that is a good family and a myth of the
Christian Christmas, a myth too fraught, now,
with crap from ASDA and too many
must-do visits/entertainments, and no
respite at a time when we might do
well to hibernate a little, to digest the
last big feast before spring. We think
we have no time to drive slowly down a country
road, beneath leafless grey trees clothed
in a layer of sparkling ice, not even dripping
yet in the still frigid air. But we rush when we
should meander, as our souls demand. We
fail to take ease at our peril.
We usually fail.
III
I play sacred music from as early in the
festive season as I can get away with.
The ancient-sounding hymns, the
Lullay Myn Liking, and Adam Lay Ybounden.
I wondered, one year, why I listened to
music written for a myth I cannot believe in.
My guru, a New Thought philosopher,
told me not to fret, I was simply
looking for the eternal divine, the
beauty that underlies all creation--
as it must, else all is chaos. Celebrate
the music itself, he said, if nothing else.
Wise man. Too soon vanished to his
own eternal life.
IV
Lashings of rain beat my window. I have
feasted on strong coffee and Cornish
saffron cake. Festive. Laden with good
Irish butter. It is beautiful, the rain
this early festive season, I shall do it.
I shall download the Christmas album
of the church of my young days, when
I could get my head around the myth,
just, and so loved the beauty of the music,
the beauty of the church, the intelligence
of a magnificently centered Anglican
priest, the kindness of the people. But
the myth got in the way. And I left.
The love of it remains, filling me
at times to bursting. So I will love
the rain, love my full tummy, love my
absent wise friend now also of sacred myth,
at least to me,
and download some sacred music.
V
Still, I hope it snows and melts and
freezes this year. I have never felt such beauty
as those woods on that day as
O Come Emmanuel filled the car with
ancient sacred sounds.
COPYRIGHT 2013 Laura Harrison McBride
Snow in St. Columb, Cornwall. (Wiki commons photo)