The Secret Stead is the pen name of a UK-based writer and
When I wake up the first thing I do is look out of my bedroom window, and peeping through the shutters today, I saw a thick layer of snow had fallen overnight. It made me think back to this time last year. The very nature of December, marking the end of year as it does, has a habit of making me retrospective.There are patterns in everything. Intricate connections that bind us all. Intricacies of science and nature that tie us to the planet we inhabit, and cycles of change that seem to make everything stay the same. I'm in a completely different situation than I was last year, but here is the snow again.
Summer has run away and December's returning snow has turned the weather bitter again; there is an angry wind biting at the heels of the world, stinging its exposed skin. And the crowds will be rushing around nonetheless. I can imagine people with pink cheeks so shiny that it could pass for joy in its first flush; and although the flaming red noses on some will shatter the illusion, Christmas will come fleetingly to sweeten the pot, a magical time of the year when each moment is unique as a snowflake never to be recreated. It's a time to dress fir trees, and deck homes with mistletoe and holly. It's a time for piping hot chicken soup, and to wrap up warm with loved ones again.
Some of us do like bears in hibernation and turn our backs to it all, but some - their stockings still full of the gifts of childhood - face the winter months head-on instead. And, whereas for adults it's a time to wisely brace for the cold, the young embrace it with a carefree attitude. On seeing the snow, the small boy I was still tells me to go out and fearlessly conquer it as I once did. When you're young, you burn strong enough to melt any snow. You're a fire, infinitely alive; where all your troubles are snowballs of light, water and air thrown away with a war cry of victory.
That's what kids do. When we're young we stamp on sliding territory. Resolute against the snow and out in the cold, we choose to build snowmen, as ephemeral as childhood, to stand guard against the approaching night. They'll be gone by tomorrow, but who cares? When we're young the notion of tomorrow doesn't exist for us. It's a bigger myth than Santa Claus; a larger-than-life figure who defies time, and in whom the very best of us believe in unconditionally when we're young.
So, here is the snow again making me think back to those days, and with Christmas just around the corner reminding me of my early childhood - a time I wholeheartedly believed in magic.
Published 19 December, 2010
