my winter songs

hello!

for the past few weeks, i have really been missing the blogging world.

last year, jev and i started a blog together -which has two whole posts! - and i thought i'd begin posting there. but lately, i have been feeling the desire to be

here



again.

i heard this song a few weeks ago that has just been haunting me ever since.... its by sara bareilles and ingrid michaelson and i think it is sweet and lovely.

winter is such a mysterious time of year for us in the northern hemisphere. there is coldness and darkness and death - very little grows or blooms, because life is not supposed to survive the winter - and yet, we do.

the other day, jev and a friend and i were talking about christmastime and the way it feels so magical. it seems there could be many, many many reasons to explain this phenomenon.... but what was curious to us was the fact that our histories with christmas all varied quite significantly between the three of us - yet we could all so certainly agree on the sentiment we felt.

this is a difficult thing to objectively discuss because many people may have numerous other emotions associated with the holidays; the sadness of missing someone with whom they loved to share the holidays, the stress that comes from spending time with our broken families, the nauseaousness (new word!) of having to gulp down another torturous bite of aunt edna's fruitcake with a smile on your face... he he. not to mention the various cultural, religious, geographic, political....etc. differences to consider.

but from the perspective of our tiny little microcosm - our miniscule cross-section of white, middle-class, north american, judeo-christian experiences - we spoke of a curious,
inexplicable
hope.

i think it was jev who pointed out the ironic joy of celebrating in the face of the dead of winter.

what a miraculous thing to think we have made it through another chapter of death.

and yet, for most of us, december may just be the start to a very long winter - is it so odd that we are already celebrating, when the worst may be yet to come?

this christmas is not much unlike any other christmas for me, i like how sara bareilles put it - 'december never felt so wrong' - but as i look at twinkling lights on a tree or sip warm, fragrant spiced cider by a fire, i will know, without yet seeing, that we have survived another winter.