In a world at times seemingly gone mad, the
holy days of November and December lift the spirit and soothe the soul with
songs, stories and celebrations of family and faith.
A small, symbolic action at the birth of our nation is
resonating with me as the curtain is being drawn on another calendar year.
It�s said that England�s Lord Cornwallis asked his military band to play an
English ballad called �The World Turned Upside Down,� as he surrendered to
American forces in Yorktown in 1781, acknowledging victory by the ragtag
American patriots over the greatest military and political power on the
globe.
Often nowadays, it seems that our world is being turned
upside down, by breathtaking technological advances and the threat of global
pandemics. By political gridlock at home, and seemingly unending wars
abroad.
Thank goodness, then, for November and December. With
trees bare, we ponder the longer, clearer view. With temperatures cold, we
come inside to the warm hearth, to read, to reflect, to share meals and
memories with family and friends. And sometimes simply to indulge in a long
winter�s nap.
This is the season for a cluster of greatly anticipated �
and much-needed � holy days, days to celebrate the sacred, to marvel at the
unseen, to give thanks for the seen, and to assess our standing in the
universe at the end of another circle around the sun.
As has been our custom now for many years, we share in
this final issue of 2014 some of our favorite literary passages about this
most special, most joyous and joyful, most holy and festive time of the
year.
Every year the first snow sets me dreaming. By March
it will only bring the grumps, but November snow is revenance, a dreamy
restitution of childhood or even infancy. Tighten the door and settle a
cloth snake against the breeze from the door�s bottom; make sure the storms
are firmly shut; add logs to the stove and widen the draft. Sit in a chair
looking south into blue twilight that arrives earlier every day. ...
� Donald Hall, �Winter,� from Seasons at Eagle
Pond, 1987.
Peter ran to the window and pushed the curtain aside
to watch them. Arm in arm they went over the path, two black figures on the
white field of snow, with stars looking down on them and the dark lines of
the hills rimming them in a known world. Now they were running a little,
then they stopped as if to catch their breath and Peter saw his mother toss
her head quickly, then his father threw back his head and laughed. What a
wonderful time Christmas Eve was, Peter thought, the world so still and
everyone in it so happy. For so many days of the year his father was serious
and full of care and his mother�s thoughts seemed far ahead of her as if she
were thinking of all the things she had to do. ...
� Elizabeth Yates, �Once in the Year,� from A
Newbery Christmas (compilation selected by Greenberg and Waugh),
1991.
So this day and this century proceed toward the
absolutes of convenience, of complexity, and of speed, only occasionally
holding up the little trumpet (as at Christmas time) to be reminded of the
simplicities, and to hear the distant music of the hound. Man�s inventions,
directed always onward and upward, have an odd way of leading back to man
himself, as a rabbit track in snow leads eventually to the rabbit.
It is one of his more endearing qualities that man
should think his tracks lead outward, toward something else, instead of back
around the hill to where he has already been; and it is one of his
persistent ambitions to leave earth entirely and travel by rocket into
space, beyond the pull of gravity, and perhaps try another planet, as a
pleasant change. He knows that the atomic age is capable of delivering a new
package of energy; what he doesn�t know is whether it will prove to be a
blessing.
This week, many will be reminded that no explosion of
atoms generates so hopeful a light as the reflection of a star, seen
appreciatively in a pasture pond. It is there we perceive Christmas � and
the sheep quiet, and the world waiting.
� E. B. White, �The Distant Music of the Hounds,� from
The Second Tree from the Corner, 1949.
