The Blackberry Walk

The Christmas holidays. Somehow, by chance of the career I fell in to being adjacent to manufacturing, the whole company is closed between Christmas and New Year, much like the school holidays of childhood. Whilst there is gnashing of teeth amongst Muslims at work since they have no special feeling for this time of year, for me this is ideal. As Christmas Day approaches, the work days become more and more relaxed, until Christmas Day itself, after which we enjoy our week of holiday. And it’s good that this time after Christmas is a holiday; I doubt I could get little done this week. For it is the most lazy time of the year. I remember back in secondary school when, in the time leading up to the holiday period, I used to list activities and projects for my time off. I came up with all kinds of interesting things to do, programming projects, DIY projects, and the like; but in time, I came to realise that I produced these ambitions to distract myself from school and exams for which I was revising. I could tell this was the case because the moment the holidays hit, all that motivation and enthusiasm fled me, the spirit blowing out from me like a chill wind. And now just as then; though there are no exams from which to distract myself, I come up with projects to pursue over the Christmas holidays, but, once the holidays start, the only will left in me is to laze and graze like a cow. Why is this? Why is Christmas particularly energy-sapping? To understand, I believe we need to go deeper into what Christmas represents, not necessarily from a Christian standpoint, but rather from a naturalistic standpoint. And this I found reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in my recent somnolence. Despite having read many of Lewis’ non-fiction works, ashamedly I’d put off reading his most famous work all this time; and I must say it was very grid, The part if the start I’d like to focus on, of course, is Christmas. The land of Narnia, under the White Witch’s rule, is in a perpetual state of Christmas-less winter, stuck eternally in snowfall. But after the children have a wonderful roast dinner with Mr and Mrs Beaver, Father Christmas appears, handing out questing gifts for the children, and at this time Aslan is able to incarnate into Narnia. Reading, I found the image of a winter-without-Christmas to be especially poignant. A winter-without-Christmas is never-ending, and it’s cold and bleak without end in sight; Christmas is a kind of turning point in the year, when the day begins its annual reconquista against the night, and the snow, whether physical or figurative, begins to melt. Christmas, then, naturalistically is a moment of hope in deepest darkest winter: the moment when cold, when night, and when death are shown to not be forever. And Advent, then, is a time of longing, a time of waiting for Christmas to come. As the nights lengthen in October, and your toes begin to chill in bed in November, by December you’re beginning to dread the rest of the winter to come - it feels it’ll be never-ending. But whilst you’re beginning to feel cold and hopeless, a reverse current, an excitement for Christmas, and a longing for Christmas to arrive, magnify. In the hearts of each and every one of us, Christmas cheer and jollity, excitement for the coming of Christmas, serves as a balm to the material conditions outside. And that excitement builds and builds until Christmas Day where it sees its release. The longing of Advent sees its fulfilment on Christmas Day, And then, tranquil and rested, the following week up to New Year’s - for our twelve days of Christmas has been Scroogily truncated - are ones of somnolent feasting, struggling even to muster the energy to play a board game. Christmas week is truly the most lazy time of the year. In Christmas, longing finds fulfilment, and hope is born into the world, whether that hope is religious or naturalistic. Born is a royal week to be spent lazing around until New Year’s; a foretaste of the eighth day of Creation! New Year’s, as I’ve written about before, is a very different time, leading on from Yuletide. It is a time of ‘new year, new me’, of new beginnings, of New Year’s resolutions, and of resetting and refreshing habits. A lucid time, January is the Roman god Janus of two faces, of doorways, where we decide which future we pick. Perhaps this ‘golden week’ between Christmas and New Year is a time to revel in this year’s me, reflect upon successes and failures, and think about what edits are to be made for the year to come. Whatever the case may be, I’ve now run out of steam. Writing this piece has exhausted today’s energy. I shall have to retreat to my pillow cocoon, chat, eat, watch the tele, and drink plenty of tea. After all, it’s cold outside; and such peace won’t be felt again until a year’s time.