Indian Summer?

It's a stunning Sunday in September; it's 15 degrees C and people are wearing their T-shirts and shades; hairdressers drive with their tops down; everywhere the signs of a beautiful extended end to summer; and the shops are full of advent calendars.
There's something fundamentally unnerving about seeing Christmas paraphernalia being peddled just one week into the new school term. It's bad enough that, just as the holidays started, retailers were proclaiming "Back to school" with such glee. And then, when DIY shopping during a wet August Bank Holiday, the cashier said woefully, "Well, it's Christmas next".

This commercialised push from one season to the next means that we run the risk of losing the enjoyment of them. If we now spend four months thinking about Christmas shopping, when the day comes we will be tired and bored of it. And this is a shame because Christmas is ace.

Even in my atheist days, I saw something wonderful in the celebrations of December 25th. I saw its pagan roots (something which I now discover may have been invented by the Victorians), its history as a glowing light in the middle of darkest winter, its promise of escapism, its emphasis on giving. I loved all this. But I loved it in December, not in the tail end of summer.

And since then I have found God: he was sitting in my kitchen cupboard trying to do a sudoku. I couldn't help him with it. My sense of the divine has become almost electric - a whoozy joyful nausea, tasting of metal, like sticking your tongue on the contacts of a 9V battery. The Tao shows us the yin and yang of life, and this cycle fits beatifully with the pagan ideas of the death and birth of every year, reflected so poetically in the story of the birth of Christ. From the darkest places can come the brightest light. And, after all, light and darkness exist because of each other.

And atop all this spirituality, there is family. There's nothing like sharing Christmas morning with loved ones. Sharing gifts and, later, the family feast. The wine, the silly hats, the games, the snoozing in an armchair.
Even the cheap chocolates that one gets in the advent calendars have their place in the festivities.

But when Christmas becomes just another DFS sale, another Tesco branded tin of life stuff, it all seems so bland. It's Christmas in sanitised form, marketed by men more interested in profit margins than in celebrations.

I love Christmas. I love winter, but I love my autmns too: the shifting hues of the trees, the changing quality of the sky, the rising of Orion. The chance to enjoy other customs and traditions. But now, in a world where "season" is a commercial opportunity, and bananas are on sale throughout the year, we become immune to these natural cycles and "autumn" is meaningless outside of the school calendar. And because we have no reason to stockpile our foods, to make our jams and chutneys, to pickle our apricots (is that what one does with them?), we have no idea of planning for the future. And so we have rising debts - why save for the future when you can have it now? We have the elastic band of credit stretched to snapping point.
So let's not blame the greedy bankers for the recession - blame the shops for selling advent calendars in September.

Sound of the Tao

Neither of us were expecting it. There had been no preparation, no planning and no expectations. It was a routine appointment.
And then she said, "Would you like to hear Baby's heart?"

An odd sort of question, really. How likely was it that we would say no? The small, square machine became an auditory portal to a different reality. It was like Vonnegut's Euphio, but without the calamity. She said the heartbeat was strong. Yes, I thought, it has the strength of the cosmos in every iamb. It was the needle in the groove of life itself, the music of holy magic reverberating through the horn.

There are a few moments one experiences in life that make the entire world shift slightly. It's an unnerving thing. Sometimes they are terrifying moments. Sometimes they are fragile moments. Sometimes they are moments of great romance. Sometimes they are moments of immense anger. Sometimes they are moments of extreme pain. But they are always awesome moments. This was one of those moments. I felt the Earth jolt. No-one else would have noticed it, consumed by their day-to-day: work, food, sleep, toilet, television. But in that moment, that small room became Wellsian in its potential to transport us. In that instant, I was everywhere and everywhen. I heard the breathing of God.