Here it is, exactly the middle of December and as precisely 10 days from Christmas! Judging by the prolific number of cars in the garage this morning when I went for my routine tricycle ride back and forth on the smooth basement floor, most people in the building opted to walk to the Sunday matins service. I defend my irreligious bearing by deferring instead to the overwhelming incapacity of my limbs. They sadly haven’t any prolonged mobility. Honestly I’ve tried to enforce them as I once did but within minutes I am bent out of proportion for having attempted the Olympic objective. Thus I have in turn opted for my own substitute.

It won’t surprise you, dear Reader, to learn that my surrogate venture is not entirely sedentary; nor that it didn’t dissuade me especially from launching my little Cadillac into the open air for a gallop along the magnificent Appleton Side Road with its plaintive white fields punctuated by stems of undergrowth and withering dry tawny corn stalk. The subsequent pathway along Hwy#7 always succeeds to gratify me as well because there is little room for argument along a 4-lane divided highway that magically floats up and down to the city and back. It is my settled view that the Village of Stittsville remains plausibly within the rural boundary while still affording the latitude for Petro-Canada and all that that entails.

I mention these petty details because it is they, those common notations within the overall theme, which heighten my exuberance to such evident gusto today. Nor do I say so dismissively! Be assured, dear Reader, that it is these trifling parameters, and they alone, which have so animated me on this late mid-winter afternoon in mid-December approaching Christmas!

As much as Christmas is about gifts – whether spiritual or otherwise – I find enormous satisfaction in the ingredients of the season which abound. Not the least of these gratuities is the ineffable image from my writing desk. It is a reminder of the fulfillment of all the most desirable pictures of the season; viz., snow, shabby dark trees, chilled blue sky, distant barrenness, the frozen purity of the river with its glassy surface costumed by blended streaks of wind. To this seemingly austere depiction I have added the well-known seasonal music of the Czech Symphony Orchestra (the likes of the Nutcracker and Good King Wenceslas); and, by chance today a former neighbour called and gave us two exceedingly tasty tiny mincemeat tarts.

A mince pie (also mincemeat pie in North America, and fruit mince pie in Australia and New Zealand) is a sweet pie of English origin filled with mincemeat, being a mixture of fruit, spices and suet. The pies are traditionally served during the Christmas season in much of the English-speaking world. Its ingredients are traceable to the 13th century, when returning European crusaders brought with them Middle Eastern recipes containing meats, fruits, and spices; these contained the Christian symbolism of representing the gifts delivered to Jesus by the Biblical Magi. Mince pies, at Christmas time, were traditionally shaped in an oblong shape, to resemble a manger and were often topped with a depiction of the Christ Child.

By lesser stimulation we also received advice today that the wife of an acquaintance died last evening. She had lately been diagnosed with incurable illness. Having to confront the dreadful thread of death at any time is an unimaginable burden; but I posit to say all the more so at Christmastime when so much of our communal enterprise survives upon matters of buoyancy. There are of course the customary platitudes to attenuate the sharpness of the sting of death; but it too persists as vigorously as the contrary elements of the day. Perhaps the divinity of perfection is both binary and forever inexplicable.