Winter by Sue Vincent

Well, Christmas approaches. There was a light sprinkling of snow yesterday and I braved the loft in search of Christmas stuff.  It is always a moment of memory opening those boxes.  Most of the decorations were made many years ago one November by my sons and my late partner. They are past their best now, the children are grown and have lives of their own. I could buy new decorations… but I won’t. They hold something very precious, the images of laughter and shared endeavour, creativity and, above all, love.

 
It will be an odd Christmas this year. It will be the first time I wake alone to an empty house, and where normally I would be creeping down to get the turkey in the oven before dawn, switch on the fairy lights and carols and wait impatiently for everyone to wake, this year I feel rather at a loss as to how to approach this new state.  Christmas has always been about people for me.

But, onwards and upwards, as they say. It is a natural change as children grow into men and they will be around at some point in the day. And of course, there will be far less washing up.
I can look back on a childhood of wonderful Christmas Days, with that anticipation, that sense of wonder and excitement, the coming together of the generations, that particular ‘something’ in the air as December played out its days. The air seemed to smell tantalisingly of mincemeat and mixed spice and everything seemed to take on a magical life for a child.

Holding Earth, Sue Vincent

Some memories stand out so sharply… like the glitter covered cardboard wings I wore as an angel in the primary school play, the live Nativity under the portico of the Town Hall one year  with a real donkey and sheep, Grandma singing Adeste Fideles and snaffling all the brazil nuts, or the pig’s head.
Now this pig’s head had a peculiar fascination for me as a child. For it was not just any pig’s head. It was a work of art.
On the old Town Street before the planners pulled it down, there was a butcher’s shop close to the doctor’s surgery. Every year, a little before Christmas, this strange example of culinary artistry would appear in the tiny window in place of the sausages and potted meat. It was, my mother told me, traditional.  But I could never quite accept this strange and unlikely combination. There was the whole pig’s head, with the apple in its mouth… that was fine, I could understand that. It was the fact that the whole thing was chocolate coated and intricately decorated with piped icing of the highest standard, like a frozen filigree of lace…. Pork and icing just didn’t sit right together. But I will never forget it,though the butcher’s shop and its denizens are long since faded into history.

I have searched for a photograph, but have seen nothing comparable except for a half glimpsed prop in Boorman’s film ‘Excalibur’. Take my word for it, this was Art the like of which I will probably never see again.
As I reminisce like the ghost of Christmas past, I smile fondly at the memories as they roll by, one after another and bring me back to the present day. So many changes over the decades… emotions and faces, landscapes and traditions… all moving softly across a flickering screen of memory.
This year marks another passage, another change to add to the tally. It is a part of the natural evolution of a family.
Change happens and we can sit and stare at it looming on the horizon with fear or distaste, or accept that it is part of the rhythm of life, part of a beautiful dance where we cannot always see the next step or the whole pattern, but we know that it will progress as a stately pavane that can break into a mazurka at a moment’s notice. The only things in life that are static are usually stagnating. Change can be a daunting thing to contemplate, but it always holds the seed of excitement and potential if we dare to peek out from underneath the covers and look. It opens the door to adventure and discovery.
This has been a year of embracing change for me, a rollercoaster year of endings, new beginnings and unexpected directions. Scary to contemplate, painful at times, but exhilarating to live. Possibility goes hand in hand with change, and when the two meet under the mistletoe, who knows what could come into being? And suddenly there is that familiar sense of excited anticipation in the air……