I am not one of those people who want to get all signs of Christmas packed away and gone as soon as possible after the big day. I treasure the quiet days after Christmas and am rather smitten with the idea of twelve days of feasting and hibernating, culminating in Twelfth Night. In fact I love the notion that Christmas isn’t really over until Candlemas, the 2nd of February. Not because I want decorations and excessive food and the commercial aspects of today’s Christmas, but because I feel it honours the winter, and our human experience of battening down the hatches and keeping snug through the dark days and cold nights, just as we have done through the hibernal centuries that have gone before.
Winter is still deeply present.
It doesn’t retire with the Christmas tree
Or the attic-stashed baubles.
It lingers with frost fronds painted on windows
And frozen bird baths,
Not something to be lamented or disdained
But, gloriously, to be cherished.
As on this Twelfth Night
When we, shunning the clamour to move on
And relinquish Yuletide,
Celebrate with winter food, games in the quickening dusk,
And hold each other amidst the icy breeze and the frozen moon.
I bring to the table four deep, laval, glossy rounds
Of molten, spoon-coating chocolate,
Bearing the plunging spoons
With a crackle and a glistening salve.
I bring to the table the depths of my winter love
My hopes for the year and my nostalgia for the passage of our shared season;
Cloaks of chocolate to envelope my kin,
Just as we blanket each other tonight
In the magnificent starkness and starry chill
Of this beautiful winter.
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