A Minimalist Christmas

Without ever planning it, many Minnesotans are ending up with a minimalist Christmas this year. We've had more snow this month that at any time since record-keeping began, and we still have a week to go, further condensing this stunning accumulation. At Anglicat's house, we simply cannot wade through the deep snow to reach the trees we normally wrap with lights. Our eager-beaver neighbors across the street, who had strung lights along their front fence before Thanksgiving, can't display their lights, because they are buried beneath the snow that the highway department pushed up against the fence. So, its a darker than usual Christmas season, except for the light that is reflected by the snow from various outside night lights.

Too, the fatigue from excessive driveway-cleaning seems to have taken the wind out of many sails: As one very clever neighboring bishop quipped:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
[My son} and I are shov’ling, shov’ling til we groan.
Thirty-seven inches is a lot of snow,
We are not discouraged as our muscles grow.

This human-energy-crisis-evoked scale-down put a new emphasis on the family creche. With fewer decorations catching the eye, Anglicat spent more than the usual amount of time contemplating Joseph and Mary as they slowly approached the Bethlehem stable on our harvest table. The very pregnant Mary in our particular family manger set carried special meaning, as we await the birth of a loved one's first child in January. Tomorrow we'll replace that figurine (with a bit of reluctance) with the one of Mary cradling the baby Jesus in her arms.

So far, Anglicat seems to be more at home with expectation mode than fulfillment mode this year. This, actually, is not a bad way to begin the Twelve Days of Christmas. The usual twelve varieties of cookies most definitely did not get baked this year, but will still be baked before Yuletide segues to Epiphany. This minimalist Christmas Day hearkens back to a time when people did not put up their trees until Christmas Eve, when Christmas began on the 25th, rather than ended with it.

Yes--it's only BEGINNING to look a lot like Christmas. Anglicat wishes all her readers a very happy one.