Anglican Christmas Eve

In the bleak midwinter

frosty wind made moan,

earth stood hard as iron,

water like a stone:

snow had fallen,

snow on snow, snow on snow,

in the bleak midwinter,

long ago. © 

Every year on the Anglican Christmas Eve I’m writing about my thoughts, reflections and feelings upon it, and this time is not an exception. Or, perhaps, a little shift is happening somewhere in my mind: the longer I live here, the more the connections to the mere idea of That Other Christmas are growing in me. The purist would say that, technically speaking, it’s nothing to be deeply thinking about since it’s all about calendar discrepancies, yet for me it’s as inevitable as it feels essential.

Love to all the little moments of this day, which have nothing to do with the largely secular approach to the festivities, is getting stronger in me by each year. There is little room left for Christmas spirit in here, yet it does exist—mostly in small countryside churches with derelict graveyards in front of them, covered with the bleakest mist of the year, in the Christmas cards (written by the neighbours’ children) that were pushed through the door in the morning, and also in A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, the Christmas Eve service held annually in King’s College Chapel and broadcast at 3 p.m. (we are listening to it right now). That’s how you (me, of course, but maybe someone else in my position, a foreigner living in England for quite a while already) know that you are emerging though this soil, and your soul is reverberating into the carols, along with the thousands of others who are like you and who bear no similarities with you whatsoever.

Angels and archangels

may have gathered there,

cherubim and seraphim

thronged the air,

but only his mother,

in her maiden bliss,

worshiped the Beloved

with a kiss.

You are thankful and joyous, and waiting for miracles.

What can I give him,

poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd,

I would bring a lamb,

if I were a wise man

I would do my part,

yet what I can I give him,

give my heart.

Merry Christmas to you all, my friends.