Almost Christmas/Yule
This year we are celebrating Yule on Christmas Eve, which will be a first. Normally we have our own Yule celebration on the night of the 21st, then open presents the next morning, the 22nd. That leaves Christmas morning free for us to prepare for dinner at our place, and to relax a bit. That’s when the dinner is at our place. This year, we are eating at my brother in law’s house, so it won’t be too much of a hassle having the big Christmas breakfast, then unwrapping presents, then going out to their place much later in the day.
I think we will have a white Xmas. Ironically, until today it was a sure thing, since we’ve had lots and lots of snow, so much that it is about 3 feet deep in our back yard, so high on either side of the path John shoveled out that it looks like the Red Sea (the White Sea?) parting. However, there will be buckets of rain today, with temps dropping very low tonight and a fear of freezing and, of course, no snow for Xmas. (And maybe frozen power lines, blackouts, and so on, just as in the Great Ice Storm ten years ago.) I don’t particularly care, as I am very sick of snow. It was much better last year when we had a green holiday—especially in terms of shopping; no boots or snow coats were needed.
Here is my offering of a poem for Christmas Eve—i.e. tomorrow:
“The Oxen” by Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet I feel
It someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel
“In the lonely barton* by yonder coomb*
That our childhood used to know,”
I would go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Thomas Hardy
*barton=farmyard; *coomb=upland valley
