The steaming Christmas pudding is placed ceremoniously on your dinner table. The brandy is sloshed over it (an extra one for luck). The lights are flicked off. A match is struck – and in the darkness the pudding flames dance with beautiful blue light.
The last day of last December, and I’m on Hembury Fort to bid farewell in the closing daylight to an extraordinary year. A surprise snow-shower sweeps in. The light turns momentarily magical and mysterious, vivid brightness battling the dark clouds.
December is a battleground. Light and dark – which will win? The Christmas lights go up – twinkling, flashing (oh so many multi-phased options to choose!), dazzling houses stealing the show. Lights in the shops, lights on the tree, on Christmas hats, even seasonal jumpers join the twinkling parade. We’re nailing our colours to the mast: we’re all cheer-leaders for light.
Meanwhile, in the church a little candle in a quiet corner steadily burns. A memory of one who was
loved and lost shines out in its flickering flame. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
As Christmas approaches gatherings lie ahead of us. Gatherings with our family, the hope of freedoms greater than last year. Gatherings we’ll be sadly absent from, due to distance or health, or simply we don’t get on together these days. Or we’ve no gatherings, for we’ve no-one to gather with.
Memories begin to gather too, jostling us more at this time of year than any other. Bright memories of past Christmas joys, beckoning us on like excited children. Or darker memories may swirl, Christmas inescapably a difficult time. Or bright memories stab at us – someone’s whose presence will no longer lighten the room.
So lights in a church will be lit, memories gathered, and hope held out by lighting candles. All who wish to remember a loved one are warmly welcomed to a service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving at Feniton church at 3pm on Sunday 12th.
The solstice will pass: the sun will win and chase winter’s darkness away. Our hearts’ own battleground of dark and light is more mysterious, complex, uncertain. So let’s deck the halls with all those twinkling-and-flashing, season-to-be-jolly, darkness-defying Christmas lights. Let us light candles of love and hope. For the Light has shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
