It is Christmas Eve today. I was in a shop yesterday and the staff were all exhausted. I was standing by the cash register and saw the mirror of my drooping shoulders in their own. I said "Merry Christmas!" in parting and got back a wooden "Merry Christmas." back. "Happy Solstice!" I added, as an experiment.
And each of the three brightened. Looked at me and said it back with life in their eyes.
This morning, my friend Jamie stopped by. "Fucking holidays," she said. And then – and this is one of the things I love about her – added "I've been thinking about the true meaning of Christmas," she said. "It means 'Peace on Earth!' I'm not saying 'Merry Christmas' anymore. I'm saying 'Peace on Earth!'"
Yes. How do we surprise ourselves out of the grayness and into the sacred when the to-do list is so long?
Myth helps.
My copy of “The Mabinogian Tetralogy” by Evangeline Walton arrived. Actually it got here about a month ago but the holidays (and travel,and dating) have made me frantic and crazy and I have not cracked it.
Until today. And the first page of the intro says that this book tells the stories in their original form,
“…set in a time when belief in the gods of air and earth of fire and water, were vast, inexplicable realities in a world pregnant with magic, a world or marvels an wonders, teeming with starge creatures who might well be denizens of starge other landscapes and who almost certainly would have monstrous arcane powers. One of the great gift of magic is mystery.”
Sigh.
That there is like being made love to by a page.
And also, isn’t that so much of what we seek to call, in our witches work of re-enchanting the world? Isn't that what the crack of light in the deep winter is for?
Merry Christmas, beloveds! Happy Solstice! And Peace on Earth!!