I'm always glad that Christmas in the northern hemisphere comes at the darkest time of the year. The Christmas lights certainly help to brighten our gloomy nights. It gets dark here before 4pm at this point in December.
The Christmas tree in front of the Victoria Hall looks much the same year after year and could arguably do with a few more embellishments! It's about all Saltaire can muster in terms of festive lights, though of course our annual Advent Windows are underway... more of which, later.
An illuminated star in my church's chancel promises the Light that is to come into our world. It's the herald of a lot more Christmas decoration to be arranged over the coming days, in the run up to our Christmas services.
Meanwhile, this is my little acknowledgement of the season... It's the first actual Christmas tree I've had for near on thirty years, my previous sitting room being far too small for such frivolity. I always made do with a little wooden structure, made in Germany, on which hung various tiny toys, angels, snowmen. I wasn't sure I could be bothered to decorate this year, but my daughter put some pressure on me! (She loves Christmas and always has her tree up as soon as she can decently do so.) Anyway, in the end I'm quite pleased with this. There is something welcoming and heart-warming, too, to come home to my apartment block glowing with lights in people's windows and LEDs draped over the balcony railings.
In our rather dark world, there's a lot of comfort in the light.
'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.' John 1:5
Thank you for this Advent-themed post, Jenny! You are so right; we need all these lights to shine in the darkness, and most of all, we need the light within. Not sure how familiar you are with Michelle Obama's work, but she wrote an entire book about it, and I posted about it here on my blog:
ReplyDeletehttps://librarianwithsecrets.blogspot.com/2023/05/read-in-2023-12-light-we-carry.html
Like you, for decades I didn't have a tree, because I spend Christmas Eve with my family and Boxing Day with O.K.'s family, with Christmas Day being my travel day. But in recent years, I have dragged out my parents' old battered plastic tree, which was in use only once or twice, and like I said the other day, there is no such thing as an ugly Christmas tree. It really makes a difference to my home when I have put it up and decorated it, which I did yesterday, just in time for this 3rd Advent Sunday.
Let there be light!