Love List: December
a snow-sparkled cloak | midwinter magic | the vanishing year
On a wild and stormy afternoon, we braved the wind-whipped lanes and set off to pick a pine tree. Of all our family rituals, this is perhaps the one I love best. My boys wrapped in coats and hats, we slid down and scrambled up the muddy slope of the Christmas tree farm on the steep valley side, debating which should be felled as this year’s tree. For a long time, our tree’s highest branches were always out of the children’s reach, home to the most delicate glass decorations, but now the older two boys are over six feet tall and will look down over the sparkly red pipe-cleaner fairy when she is placed in her rightful place on top.
My heart feels as fragile as a bauble when I remember that we have only a couple more years before my eldest leaves home and we will be picking a tree without him. He smiles at me, holding his youngest brother’s hand, as my husband ducks into a cosy shed to pay for the tree. A spaniel snoozes in front of a woodburning stove and handmade wreathes cover the walls. My husband unhooks one to bring home for our front door — it is woven through with pine cones, a perfect midwinter wheel. When our tree has been netted, the eldest picks it up and carries it effortlessly up the lane, past the church to the car.
I spot an outcrop of sprouting mistletoe and trail behind to pick a few sprigs which I will tie with a silver ribbon and hang by the front door. Gathering greenery, choosing a tree, bringing the outside in — I am drawn to these pagan gestures of renewal far more than to fairy lights and glass baubles (although I love those, too). In the depths of dark, evergreens have long represented hope, life and the eventual promise of spring.
The boys tie the tree tightly to the car roof and we take it away under pale winter skies, winding through a monochrome landscape of skeletal branches and windswept fields, cold sheep shining in the falling dusk. The weather is bleak, but beneath hard ground seeds still slumber. I look for latent magic in winter’s decay — leaf litter crumbling and becoming absorbed into black earth; rotting logs adorned with glowing moss; animal bones bleached pale. These late days of December often feel frantic, but when I allow myself to take a breath, I find myself soothed by emptiness, stillness and inky peace.
A few years ago, driving home from the Christmas tree farm in velvety dark between snow-smothered fields, we were startled by the pale, graceful silhouette of a barn owl flying close —it swooped silently across the road first one way, and then the other, turning its head momentarily towards us before disappearing into the gloom of the hedgerow. I carried the memory of this haunting, ethereal bird away with me, past powder-sprinkled trees, along the winding road, and out, out into the sacred closeness of midwinter night.
This is my last post of 2024 — I’ll be back on Friday 3rd January. Thank you for reading my words this year. Go gently, friends.
If you’d like to hear me talking all things bookish with
and on The Bibliotherapists podcast, you can listen along here;
Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this month: