A NoWriggling Merry Christmas!

This is my first ever Christmas as a blogger and five months since I started I am enjoying it as much as ever. Things have changed over that time, my focus might have shifted, but I hope those of you good enough to come over every so often find enough to interest you and encourage you to come back for more. Thank you all so much for your support.

I thought I should put a poem in the middle of this post, as if it were a Christmas card. It is one of my favourites – The Oxen by Thomas Hardy.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

This poem overcomes for me those cynical doubts that creep up on us as we stand in long supermarket queues buying too much food and drink, or when we see horrors happening in the world that we feel powerless to stop. It is all about clinging on to that hope that this whole ‘dream’ of a magical Christmas is based on something real, and that we should hold on to that as we wake up tomorrow and begin our festivities.

To round things off till I am back online I thought I would finish with a song. Not me of course -there would be nothing festive in hearing me sing – but Chris Rea ‘Driving Home for Christmas’. There are many songs I love at this time of year. ‘Stop the Cavalry’ by Jona Lewie is my favourite, but this one is possibly the nicest Christmas song ever written. It pretty much says it all. Happy Christmas everyone!!

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