Recollecting the Moment

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes, some have gotten broken, and carrying them up to the attic. The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt, and the children got ready for school. There are enough leftovers to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week, not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot, stayed up so late, attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to love all our relatives, and in general grossly overestimated our powers. 

Once again as in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed. The promising Child who cannot keep His word for long. The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory, and already the mind begins to be vaguely aware of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are, back in the moderate Aristotelian city, and the kitchen table exists because I scrub it. The Child, however dimly, however incredulously, The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all. For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be, grew up when it opened.

Now, recollecting that moment, we can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious, remembering the stable where for once in our lives everything became a You and nothing was an It. And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause, we look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son, we are tempted ever to pray to the Father, "lead us into temptation and evil for our sake," they will come, alright, don't worry, probably in a form that we do not expect and certainly with a force more dreadful than we can imagine.

In the meantime there are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem from insignificance. The happy morning is over, the night of agony still to come, the time is noon, when the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure a silence that is neither for nor against her faith that God's Will will be done, that in spite of her prayers, God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

Christmas Oratorio by W.H. Auden