The Christmas Spirit Forever

Thanks to a mutual friend, I've just met lovely Joanna Cannon. On her blog, I found this wonderful Christmas post. Joanna has said everything I'd been thinking, everything I would want to say. Thank you for that, Joanna. Christmas may be over, but the spirit is alive.

 A wishlist for Christmas …

For those who face Christmas alone, I would give the gift of a forgotten memory. The rush of a memory so fresh and new, it makes folds in a stretch of time and builds an easy footpath back to a long-ago Christmas of belonging.

For those who travel each day pressed into strangers on a crowded train, who feel the lives of others leak into their own, I would give the dawn of a December morning and a silent, crimson sky. I would send the flush of hidden pheasants in a winter mist and frosted breath which tumbles across a soundless horizon.

For those who plug themselves into a counterfeit world, I would steal their iPods and their mobile telephones and their earphones and replace them with the blackbird who sits by my window each day and sings with a heart which is filled with joy at just being alive.

For the field, I would give the gift of being a meadow once more. It would no longer be sliced by wire and fence, and machinery would cease to cut into its flesh. The value of the meadow would not be measured in the weight of its crops, but in the whisper of a breeze through its grass and the dance of squirrels across unmeasured branches.

For the pheasants and the lambs and the calves, I would give a life without fear of bullets and slaughter. For those who hunt and kill, I would give the gift of understanding that a life which feeds on control and greed is truly a life less lived.

For those who watch clocks from a marked life, who are fixed to their seats by invisible chains, I would give you the gift of an oak tree. You will sit at its feet and whisper into its bark and you will find the seat so comfortable, you may wonder if it was made just for you all along.

For those who want without need and count without value, for any who take from those with nothing to give and beat people in our society who are already beaten, I would give you eyes to see, a voice to speak out and ears which will listen to your conscience.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment on my ramblings this year and may your best December gift be the one you least expect.