Let there be light

The short days are getting to me.

I love the holiday with its festive mood and gatherings, but the days are too cold and too short this time of year for someone like me to call it the best time of the year.

I prefer the hot days of summer where midnight is as lively as noon.

What I dislike most, though, is the dark. The “black of night” seems blacker, and I find myself craving light. I’ve never been a fan of long nights, but since my visit to the Islands of Orkney a few years ago I seem to miss the light more.

When I was there, it was June, and the days stretched on forever as the summer solstice neared. Nights were lit by soft sunlight that disappeared only for a few hours.

The tour guide at Maeshowe , a chambered cairne build roughly 3000 years BC, noted that it was the opposite at the December solstice. A soft glow for an hour or two, then darkness.

Yikes!

We then hunched over and walked to the center of the tomb, which was pitch black and the guide shone her flashlight to recreate the Solstice sunlight. Whenever the lack of light really begins to bother me, I just flip to this website and remind myself it could be darker.

The accidental Christmas

On Sunday, I dug out my Christmas boxes to find my wreath. Door decoration is a competitive sport among my neighbors, and I fall way short of the mark most of the year. This season I wanted to try and meet minimal standards.

But I didn't stop at the door.

No, after I hung the wreath, I decided a bowl of ornaments on the table would look festive. Then I set out the mitten cookie jar, which meant I had to bake cookies to put in it. Then the ceramic medieval Santa. Then the Nativity (and somewhere my old Sunday school teacher is wincing at the order). Then the...well, you get the idea.

Days later my place is festooned for the holidays, a brand-new tree lights up my window, and most of the ingredients for Bohemian tea--a traditional winter drink in my family--clutter the kitchen counter (I need to buy oranges). But I can no longer go into my office because the unchosen decorations wait in ambush from their tissue-paper nests, determined to join the fun.

So now I'm staring at a huge ornament that I hung over the mantle when I lived in Charlotte and wondering if it's gauche to decorate the bathroom. Is it?