Light up Your Christmas more than Ever this Year
What will you be doing at Christmas this year? For many of us, Christmas 2020 — Covid Christmas — will stand out as one that was markedly different. Mr C and I have decided, whatever the government regulations may or may not allow, not to play Russian roulette with our family and friends. Better to wait a month or two more before spending time with our children and grandchildren, than to risk not being here to enjoy another Christmas or two. No melodrama here — simple fact. I am over 70, Mr C is ten years older and clinically extremely vulnerable. We are taking no chances. Yet we are fortunate. I know that my daughter and her family will have a great time together, as will my stepson and daughter-in-law and their brood, in their respective homes. My son and daughter-in-law have been working from home in London, and are driving up to spend Christmas with us, as they always do. By the time they arrive here just before the big day, we will all have been self-isolating for 10 days, so that we will have a safe, relaxed, small but very lovely Christmas celebration.
Your Christmas will be different this year….
Of course, there are no office parties, no gatherings in restaurants at long tables festooned with crackers and baubles, no present exchanges with friends and family that involve drinks parties or pub crawls. And for me (this is the bit I have missed the most) no shopping trips. I am never more excited than when December comes, and I can attach my sparkly Christmas brooch to my winter coat and head into Birmingham on the train, breathing in the air of anticipation as I gaze into festive shop windows and stroll through the German market, maybe meeting a friend for mulled wine as twilight descends and the Christmas lights begin to twinkle….
….but the lights are still on
Ah, the Christmas lights! I loved them as a small child, and old age has in no way dimmed their magic. I still feel a surge of excited joy when I turn into our road and see my neighbours’ gloriously festooned tree, a mass of bright white sparkle filling the dark night with all that Christmas promises to be. My little sister, fifteen years my junior, feels the same. She recently wrote of her memories of coming home from school and standing outside the window, gazing at the tree within, of “peering deep within its branches to a magical place”. And she still feels it. Our mother felt it too. There is something universal, something eternal about our emotional response to festive lights.
This appears to be the case for all humankind. Light, and in particular candlelight, symbolises a path through the spiritual darkness. Candlelight or lamplight plays a part in ceremonies that take place in every mosque, synagogue and church. In Buddhism the lighting of a candle is a symbol of impermanence and change, and of the enlightenment of the Buddha, and the Diwali festival of lights represents the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil.
Even before organised religion, there is evidence of the inextricable link between light and spirituality. At Stonehenge in Wiltshire, the axis of the stones is aligned with sunrise at the summer solstice and sunset at the winter solstice. This is just one of several monuments around the world that are in harmony with the sun’s rays, reminding us of just how in tune with the seasons our early ancestors were — how they understood that sunlight was essential to their harvests and therefore to their survival.
It is not surprising then, that Christmas is all about the lights. Traditional nativity scenes depict the haloes around the infant Christ and his mother, and show the night sky illuminated by the host of angels appearing to the shepherds. And let’s not forget that the magi were led to the stable in Bethlehem by a bright star in the dark sky.
These days, we buy our Christmas lights on line or at the supermarket, and we plug them in. In our increasingly secular world, it can feel like the commercialism of Christmas is eating away at its spiritual side. And yet, in this year — 2020 — the year in which our days were darkened by a global pandemic, when for many people there has been loss and grief, and upheaval in the life that they once took for granted — have you noticed that the streets are brighter? Reportedly sales of Christmas lights in the UK have more than tripled this year as we all seek to light up our lives a little more than usual. Whatever our faith, or if we have none, it seems that we have much in common with our ancestors; we have a need to light up not only the literal darkness of midwinter but also the symbolic gloom of what has been a horrid year.
However small your Christmas has to be this year, may it be filled with light to cheer you this festive season — and may we all follow the light at the end of the tunnel into a much brighter 2021.
