Christmas Day

Friday 25th December, 2020

I woke to the most dazzling dawn I have ever seen. I have crossed the Tay so am facing east when normally I face west and see the sunset. I am in a friend's flatlet at the top of her house with huge windows. One faces towards Fife and Perthshire up the Tay. The other looks down the Tay and toward the North Sea. In fact that window frames the Tay Railway Bridge and is a hundred yards from the art studio of the late MacIntosh Patrick. He painted the bridge and I can see it in my mind's eye. The dawn started a deep crimson then red, then cardinal red and pinks and roses melding into ochres and oranges and yellows and golds and on to lilacs and blues and silvers and greys. I watched for over half an hour. A fanfare of welcome to the feast of the Incarnation.

Breakfast was muesli and apricots with creme fraiche followed by a boiled egg and rye bread. It was perfect. Then a walk along the Tay and on to the allotment to pick fresh broccoli for luncheon. Goose was cooking and was in the Aga for four hours. I was in charge of home grown brussels fried in goose fat with bacon and chestnuts. When lunch arrived it was good.

There is a tradition of present unwrapping at various intervals.

My day was set up when I read three stories on the BBC website. First the remarkable Rob Barrow and his fight and living with Motor Neurone Disease. Then Nick Butter and his many marathons in aid of prostate cancer research. Finally the story of the Afghan Arson Fahin. A musician with a hellish background of war and the Taliban and poverty and his seeing the film The Pianist the story of the holocaust survivor, Wladyslav Szpilman and its inspiration. What courage, perseverance, generosity and sheer spirit they all displayed. To me it was the spirit of God among us. It was divine grace and the height of the human spirit. I felt so overwhelmed with admiration and also felt renewed and filled with hope.

The Christmas tree had a hideous Angel on it bought over forty five years ago and as ugly as any home made crafted Angel could be....but even she with her horrendous hair and wings and patterned dress somehow felt a survivor, a liver of life in abundance.

I left the luncheon after three hours, missing the pudding but I had had sufficient and my back ached.

I did stream the vigil Mass in St Peters with the Pope presiding. His sermon was utterly amazing. It was one of the sermons that moved me deeply and which I will remember and recall many years hence. It has been an awesome feast filled with a true energy of hope and celebration. I feel there is a profound miracle called man within a Creation of ineffable beauty and truth and love. My belief is uplifted, a belief that God so loved the world he sent his son. Today is a commemoration of that son's birth. I truly sense the power and reality of that.

I am speechless as nothing can communicate the emotions and heart renderings of this day. Nor can anything understand the absolute love of that act, that historical act.