Watching the great commercial apparatus of the Christmas holiday collapse in on itself in the whimpering supplication of January “sales events” brings a perverse pleasure to me. I don’t think anyone in their maturity finds true satisfaction in the frantic churn of consumer goods at Christmastime, but the process particularly wears on me as I grow older. Outside the enchanted snow globe of childhood imagination, Christmas can be a trifle glaring, so I am always happy to receive January’s invitation to move ahead to something new.
These dark days and weeks following the winter solstice are made for seekers. It is the nature of darkness to sharpen the eye and whet the appetite for light. We scan the horizon for something, anything, to leaven the weight of the winter night.
This year, I was lucky and received a gleaming gift straight from the arctic circle thanks to the sharp eyes of my friend Dottie Evans. Dottie called me on the shortest day of the year to say that she was pretty sure she had seen a small flock of snow buntings on her daily dog-walking trek up to the high field at Fairfield Hills. In an hour or two, I was up in the field myself, eyes up, scanning the horizon for this rare visitor from the north. I should have looked down.