... the close and holy darkness ...

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six ...

... I got into bed.  I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

(Dylan Thomas)

*

It snowed a little bit last night, as promised, before I went to bed.  We've had no snow to speak of until now.  When I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, there was only a dusting of snow.  Just now I looked out again in the darkness and see that it is snowing steadily. 

December is full of celebrations from numerous traditions and days that are meaningful to me because of what happened in my life on those days.  It is a joy to celebrate all of the days in December, including those of Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Ramadan when it occurs in December.

And then a New Year begins in January.

* 

Always sending love to blog friends near and far.

TRADITIONS / RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS

When our mother was alive, she always sent wreaths she ordered from Starcross Community to my two sisters and me. My wreath always arrived on December 1, and I would hang it on the outside wall next to my front door until Valentine's Day. In 1994, the year she died unexpectedly on December 3, no wreath had arrived. I've wondered why she didn't send a wreath that year. Did she know she was going to die? For the next year, I continued her tradition by ordering a wreath. When our mother met our father, she was a church secretary in an Episcopal church. Our father had been raised as a Lutheran in Minnesota. By the time our mother died, she was celebrating the Jewish holidays in secret, not wanting to upset our father. In the years after her death, I have developed my own traditions.

When the Starcross wreath arrives, I place it outside next to my front door, where the evergreen fragrance lingers, and the wreath remains amazingly green. I get out a box marked Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice and Eid al-Adha. I upwrap the figures of Mary and Joseph that our mother gave to me and place them facing a menorah on my living room table. I didn't have the menorah until two years ago. The menorah remains there until the end of Hanukkah.

On Bodhi Day, December 8, I think about the Buddha and remember the day RTN came home from Vietnam in 1970. This year, December 8 was also Eid al-Adha.

On December 20, 21, 22, or 23, I celebrate the Winter Solstice, a beloved turning point.

On Christmas Eve, I watch the videos of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" as well as "A Child's Christmas in Wales," narrated by Denholm Elliott. Either just after midnight on the beginning of Christmas Day or when I wake up on Christmas morning, depending on my work schedule, I unwrap the baby Jesus figure and place it close to Mary and Joseph.

From December 26 through January 1, I watch one section at a time of the video of "Harambee!," written and directed by Fracaswell Hyman.

On January 1, I celebrate New Year's Day. I love New Year's Day. For many years that was the only day of the holiday season when I felt a sense of celebration.

On Epiphany, January 6, I bring out figures of the Three Wise Men, which I didn't have until three years ago. January 6 is the birthday of my nephew, whom I haven't seen since my father died in March of 2003. I celebrate the life of my nephew!

At the end of January 6, I put everything back in the box until the next December.

Last year, between December 1 and January 6, I also listened to the videos of "Muhammed: Legacy of a Prophet" (PBS), "Faithful to Continuance: Legacy of the Plateau People" (a celebration of art and artists produced and directed by Mimbres Fever), "Ram Dass: Fierce Grace" (a film by Mickey Lemile), and "Pema Chodren & Alice Walker in Conversation on the Meaning of Suffering and the Mystery of Joy" (published by Sounds True, Inc.). For me, the traditions are all alive and evolving together.

Come to think of it, the first tradition, before the opening of the traditions box, is celebrating Thanksgiving in peaceful solitude on the 4th Thursday in November.

For most of my adult life, I dreaded this time of year. I'm grateful to have found a way to see it differently.

There was more snow last night, and it just started snowing again. Oboe is curled up, sleeping. It's cold and quiet outside at this moment, except for the Red-Winged Blackbirds singing from the tops of the cattails.

After Mary Cassatt (1982)

Today is Christmas Day. Coincidentally, this drawing relates in its own way to Christmas in that it was influenced by the artist, Mary Cassatt, who frequently chose to draw or paint a woman and child or a child alone. This drawing was another classroom assignment, that of taking a gesture from an image by another artist and making it one's own. 

 I had chosen Mary Cassatt's oil painting, "Girl Arranging Her Hair (1886)", for the assignment. The image came from a paperback art book titled MARY CASSATT: OILS AND PASTELS, by E. John Bullard (1976). E. John Bullard commented on Mary Cassatt's painting in this way: ". . . Cassatt's young girl has a definite personality. She is neither pretty nor refined. Her ungainly gesture is that of a person unobserved, absentmindedly coiling her hair." (p. 44) 

 When I read those words, I felt protective of that young girl, and I knew that Mary Cassatt would not have seen the young girl she painted as "neither pretty nor refined" or "ungainly." I see a young girl whose presence is marked by strength and gracefulness. In my drawing, the girl has grown up. She is strong and independent. 

 Now I am remembering why I was so drawn to Mary Cassatt's work. It was Mary Cassatt who said: "I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work." "If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color."

Mary Cassatt, after 1900 Frederick Arnold Sweet Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. 

"I doubt if you know the effort it is to paint! The concentration it requires, to compose your picture, the difficulty of posing the models, of choosing the color scheme, of expressing the sentiment and telling your story! The trying and trying again and again and oh, the failures, when you have to begin all over again! The long months spent in effort upon effort, making sketch after sketch. Oh, my dear! No one but those who have painted a picture know what it costs in time and strength!" "After a time, you get keyed up and it 'goes', you paint quickly and do more in a few weeks than in the preceding weary months. When I am en train, nothing can stop me and it seems easy to paint, but I know very well it is the result of my previous efforts." Reprinted from Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector by Louisine W. Havemeyer. 

 And then there are these words from one of my favorite poets: 

Praise wet snow falling early 

Praise the shadow my neighbor's chimney casts on the tile roof even this gray October day that should, they say, have been golden. 

Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow. 

Praise god or the gods, the unknown, that which imagined us, which stays our hand, our murderous hand, and gives us still, in the shadow of death, our daily life, and the dream still of goodwill, of peace on earth. Praise flow and change, night and the pulse of day. 

 Denise Levertov