Yes: it does seem a trifle eccentric. No: I am not a devotee of some arcane religious sect with a different calendar. The weather is forecast to be good tomorrow, so I plan to practise what has become for me an extremely important aspect of the ritual of Christmas.
I will go out into the countryside and come back to the house with wild evergreens, especially holly. For many years now I have been aware of a group of holly bushes that grow in the valley below Queensbury, where I can rely on getting branches with good berries. As for the rest of the display, I can rely mainly on what grows in the garden. How long I have been doing this is quite uncertain, but I can remember a similar expedition with my sons when one of them was still in junior school. He is now in his fifties!
It would be hard to be very specific about what this means to me. I have no attachment to the Christmas tree, and we don’t have one. The display of evergreens, however, is something I do set great store by. Of course I am aware of the possibility of this having a purely “pagan” interpretation, but it is important to note that the greenery in the house will surround a traditional Nativity crib. Thinking about it today I have become aware of a very important point. The power and significance of symbols doesn’t depend upon one having a coherent or complete explanation of what is going on and why they are important. Their “meaning” is not always accessible through language.
This has become very evident to me over the past month, during which I have been engaged in my “Green Man” project.* It is impossible to explain clearly why I find this imagery so compelling, but I do seem to be gripped by it. Having “finished” it a couple of days ago I am haunted by yet another idea which is insisting upon being developed. One thing I am coming so see clearly, however, is that “symbolic vocabularies” (if I can use that term) do not exist in hermetically sealed compartments. They offer a resource that can be adapted to convey ideas that, for one reason or another, it is difficult to express in what might seem to be more obvious symbols.
*Steve Rayner’s brilliant photographs arrived this morning. I hope they will find their way into this web-site fairly soon.