I love the evening after a snow storm, when all the work is done and the slightly unquiet quiet of the city has returned. I'm here with my glass of port (had to hit forty before I learned about port) and a slumbering house and my thoughts. All is well.
I know tomorrow will be busy again, but it's a short week. The mania will only last until Wednesday. Ever since that glorious year that Charles Dickens published his Christmas tale, no one wants to enforce work on Christmas Eve. Thank you Mr. Dickens - just another reason you're one of my heros.
From my window I can see across the street to the elaborate decorations of our bachelor neighbor's house. Angels, toy bears, soldiers, snowflakes, candles and a tiny winter village complete with motorized train circling the whole affair. It's cheerful and bright and not at all gaudy or showy. Each day, knots of kids circle round his window to look at the tiny villagers and see the train go - it's quite a lovely show.
It is a magic time of year; or a time when magic seems more likely. I wonder if there's some ancient inner sense for these special times: midsummer, equinox, yuletide, spring. I wonder if there's a sense of the magic that each of those times brings; like a changing of the guardian of the season; like a passing of the wand between enchanted folk.
This magic of the waning days cheers me the most, because I think, it's the magic closest akin to a child's spirit. It's the magic that twinkling lights on the white of the snow creates to make the night less frightening. It's the magic that my daughter and son see so palpably from the window when they watch the snowflakes fall and drift. It's the magic of old wintery elves with a merry winkle in their eyes that is older than the religion that adopted them.
It's the magic that gives me hope in the longest nights of the year.
Good night.
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