A Poem for Christmas Eve

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Mark Zeiger

Christmas Eve has come. Tonight is the new moon; if you’re reading Mary Oliver’s Twelve Moons as a lunar calendar with me this year, tonight’s poem is called, appropriately enough, Christmas Poem.

Zeiger family homestead Christmas

Zeiger family homestead Christmas decorations (Photo: Mark Zeiger).

I laughed when I read this one, because I had misunderstood Cold Moon—Hannah’s Children earlier this month. This poem is about the Christmas Eve legend I originally thought that poem referred to.

I assume that since I read Twelve Moons when I first got it, I must have remembered a poem on this topic without realizing it, and assigned that meaning to the wrong poem.

And, as I inferred in discussing that other poem, children do, in fact, test the Christmas Eve legend! At least, Mary Oliver did. And what a lovely story it becomes—not one of disillusionment or betrayal, but of comfort, and, in some small measure, perhaps—joy.

And that, kind reader, is what I wish for you and yours tonight on Christmas Eve, tomorrow on Christmas day, and always: Comfort and Joy.

Merry Christmas!

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A Blank Slate

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Mark Zeiger

As I’ve tried to express in many different ways, the Christmas season is very important to us, full of major and minor holidays and observances. One of the most insignificant of these is quickly becoming, for me, one of the most holy days of the season—holy not in any religious sense, but in the sense of personal value.

Today is known by some by the odd name: “The Secret of the Unhewn Stone.” This was the single blank day in the Celtic tree month calendar tradition, an intercalary day to make the other months come out right within that culture’s time reckoning.

It is, in many ways, a “lost day,” the embodiment of the time-out-of-time concept of celebration, especially applicable to Christmas, that our European ancestors developed in the Middle Ages. It feels like waking up and thinking it’s time to rise, only to discover that it’s too early yet. The promise of the day is still ahead, but there’s time yet to enjoy a bit more sleep beforehand. Continue reading →

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