Winter Solstice at 45� N.

 A Childhood Recollection 

  

[First posted in December 2011. Repeated by request.]

 

Harry T. Cook
Harry T. Cook
By Harry T. Cook
12/20/13

The sun set before suppertime here today. The snows long since have come. A drift now stirred up by a steady northwest wind is framing the window in a whimsy of curves.

 

Through the frosted pane I can just make out what else the persistent wind is doing with the bounty of snow. It is reshaping our out-of-doors -- blowing, as the Bible says, where it listeth. And whilst I can hear the sound thereof, I cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. But what it is doing on its way to wherever, surely even a gifted sculptor would find difficult to match.

  

Beyond sight, I can hear yet another thing the wind is up to: impelling breakers off the nearby lake onto the shore where, since the cold set in, they've been creating a polar landscape. When this wind dies down, I am hoping the lake, unbothered by further disturbances and abetted by a couple of nights of below-zero temperatures, will form a foot-deep floor of ice for the skating.

 

Aloof above it all is a frigid moon just entering upon its last quarter with scarcely a visible star for celestial company.

 

I hear the clock strike 5:30, then, as if on cue, the low moan of a whistle. It's the southbound passenger train. The locomotive's headlight pierces both the dark and the snow rushing up to meet it. I can see passengers through the windows of the coach -- but only for an instant. I think the engineer must be determined to bring it in on time, or so the staccato bursts of smoke and steam seem to be saying. Some day I'm going to ride that train to wherever it goes. But tonight I'm happy to be just where I am.

 

The thin glass of the window at which I have been standing the while must have been glazed into place at least half a century ago. It is the only thing between me and freezing -- that and the draft rising through the heat register at my feet.

 

In the other room already fixed on its stand is a fresh-cut fir, its pungent and unmistakable scent mixing with the aroma of supper on the stove. My father has taken from the bookcase a copy of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" -- his 9th birthday present in 1911. He will be reading aloud chapters from its yellowed pages over the next several nights before bedtime.

 

Father is no Scrooge. He is a Bob Cratchit: all-giving, optimistic and good-humored, though far better off than Cratchit before Scrooge's second chance to make mankind his business. Father has just gone down cellar to throw a couple of scoops of coal into the red-hot maw of the ancient furnace. Mother is serving up pot roast. Once at table, we repeat in unison the traditional grace.

 

I am hungry, but before I pick up my fork I turn again to look out the window. Now the wind has thrown up a blanket of snow across its whole expanse. I'm thinking maybe that helps keep the cold out and the warmth in.

 

Father observes that this is "the shortest day of the year." I say, "I wish it would last forever." It didn't, but each year when the winter solstice comes around, I think of the night of that shortest day and of those who sat together at table and of my mother and of her pot roast.

Copyright 2013 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

What a Friend They Had in Jesus:  
The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers

Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?

Available at:

Readers Write 
Essay 12/13/13: The Skeptic's Christmas                

Billie Fenton, Concord, CA:

So interesting to read you extolling Christmas traditions. I remember Christmas Eve 1962, when my husband Fred was the new vicar in Imperial Beach. We lived in a little rented house smack-dab on the beach. Our front yard could disappear during high tide. Next door to us in a ramshackle house lived Shu-Shu, a barmaid at a local place down the street. She had a German shepherd she called Hitler, "because someone nice should have that name." She wasn't a bit intimidated when she learned her new neighbor was a local "minister" but said, "It gives the neighborhood a little class." On Christmas Eve, before she went to work at the bar, and Fred off to church, she invited us for a drink with some of her friends, who had names like Dirty Dan and Carver Dave. It was the first time I had been in her house. It was furnished with make-shift furniture and old travel trunks, which she proudly opened and showed the beautiful things she had found in them; there was an exquisite wedding dress and other clothes of a 20's vintage. The public dump on the strand between Imperial Beach and Coronado Island had yielded up these treasures. I sat on a sort of futon while Fred glad-handed the small crowd. We had a drink of some kind, warmed by a wood fire and all those bodies in the small room, when someone said, "What the hell. Let's sing 'Silent Night.'" As we sang, my futon began to move; it was Dirty Dan I had been sitting on! The song was so sweet and stirring that my eyes filled with tears. Abruptly, it was time for "church." But after that memorable evening visit we would wave at Dirty Dan and Carver Dave as they scoured the shore for driftwood, and Shu-Shu became our five-year-old's good friend. She was the one he remembers having taught him to braid the hair on his troll doll! And Hitler made the neighborhood feel very safe. So, a very merry and delicious holiday to all. And, what the hell. Let's sing "Silent Night."

 

Blanche Powers, San Diego, CA:

I'm sure that you speak for many of us with your Christmas lamentation. The thing is so idealized, quite out of proportion. If people would only see the manger scene as one of abject poverty and exclusion. Thank you for your well-honed thoughts.

 

Diane Tumidajewicz, St. Clair Shores, MI:

You've done it again -- hit the mark with this agnostic. I will always feel lifted up by Handel's Messiah (I know all the verses, too), and a childlike delight as I drive my 85-year-old mother around again this holiday season to enjoy the holiday light displays. I, too, relate more to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" than to the Bethlehem myth, as lovely as it is. Thanks for another thoughtful essay.

 

John Bennison, Walnut Creek, CA:

Even while citing all the quite reasonable reasons he reasons as he does, the renowned atheist Alain de Botton has confessed he still loves to sing Christmas carols; much for the same unreasonable reason a Christmas hymn learnt in childhood can still bring tears to the eyes of mature skeptics. If there is such a thing as a convergence of deity with humanity, it is expressed in the closing stanza of my own childhood reminiscences; when throngs of Christmas Eve worshippers would conclude their annual pilgrimage in a darkened sanctuary on bended knee, singing "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." It is a "weary lament" indeed, as you put it. The slaughter of the innocents in Newtown repeats itself with numbing regularity. Who today recalls that footnote in history only four months ago when many more Syrian innocents were gassed to death. Four months later, mirth and merriment would feign to mask the terror that lurks in the night shadows of that mythic Bethlehem stable; those real shadows without which the nativity story of Jesus' birth is only a sentimental and nostalgic fantasy. Why else would those iconic figures, the ancient astrologers traveling afar to read the signs of the times, have concluded -- once they got up off their bended knees of adoration -- that there's just gotta be a better way back home?


Ron Payne, Union County, OH:

Your latest piece on a Skeptic's Christmas is so very well conceived and composed. Thank you for something that speaks to me and for me!

 

Georgia Lichtman, Bellingham, WA:

Your essay suggests that there is something phony about Christmas the way it is celebrated in America. I've thought that for some time, and you have done me the favor of getting it down on paper. However it is you and yours will keep Christmas, I hope it is a good one for you.

 

Florenz Hermanson, Columbus, OH:

You prove that one doesn't have to buy into all the theological gobbledegook to celebrate Christmas. It really is a public, secular holiday. And I, for one, make the most of it without getting roped in to goofy belief stuff.

 

Jack Lessenberry, Huntington Woods, MI:

Beautiful [essay]. Ah, how much America is like Christianity.

 

Christie Otter, Livonia, MI:

Jeffery Eugenides in his novel, "Middlesex", describes Xmas as "the wounded, dishonest season." 

 

Chloe Bernard, London, W.1, GB:

Delighted to read your essay on a Skeptic's Christmas. I have been celebrating them for years, and that within the shadow of a church steeple. When the sexton there rings out the Christmas bells, I celebrate with a sip or two of brandy. Cheers!

 

Robert Causley, Roseville, MI:

Speaking of the murders in Newtown. Those who died that day might live still had not a careless nation failed to summon the social and political courage to curb the spread of its own weapons of mass destruction." This nation must look at its continuous manufacture of weapons and our aggression towards the world. The tremendous monetary and human resources dedicated to the continuing conflicts worldwide must be slowed down. We make laws that are supposed to assure freedom and they actually cause incarcerations on a massive scale. We look at other societies unlike our own and forcefully push our agendas that do not fit and therefore cause more problems. Look at the media in the 50's and 60's and one can see working together was the theme and it did work! Look at the media today and you see the theme of aggression and we have aggression. Peace on earth would be a fantastic start. Not pieces of earth, buildings, vehicles, and people flying through the air as we see in the media today.

 

Dewey Barton, New Smyrna Beach, FL:

I enjoyed your essay today very much.

What do you think?
I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at [email protected].