Nashville Stitch N Bitch

close and holy darkness

Well, the knitting has been put away (OK, not really. It's never really "put away") every present has been wrapped, the house is clean, the advent calendar is down to its last day. Today I will cook all kinds of fantastically overcooked and weird Southern food and try to keep the kids from spontaneously combusting while we get ready for Christmas Eve at my mom's house.

Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales said of being the recipient of knitted gifts: "There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us."

Let us all stop now say a little prayer that our gifts of handmade to our loved ones are not of the Useful kind. May they represent the right balance between needed and wanted and and maybe even strike a little chord of indulgent.

I hope that for your holiday, all of your bells are jingly, your eggs noggy, and none of your gifts Useful.

xo

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Posted by Angela at December 24, 2005 07:46 AM