Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho,It’s Back To Work We Go! Some with a heavy heart but most I’m fairly sure with a sense of relief that it’s all over for another year as some sort of mantle of reality drops back onto our shoulders.
For some that will start with the morning commute from a railway station where the inevitable delays and niggles will have been made worse by the lasting effects of the flooding in so many parts over the previous weeks. For others it will be a drive along clogged roads to an office somewhere where someone will be tasked with that most depressing of jobs – taking down the decorations.
It’s a job I hate to do here on the farm. Our ancient farmhouse looks so good decorated in naturalistic style and we always have plenty of twinkly lights to add to the greenery. We live in a profoudly dark sky place and the extra lights here are a way of shouting out defiance to the darkness which surrounds our farm for so many months. Without our extra Christmas lights the place seems suddenly bare and the dark so much more powerful. Part of the Christmas story is that Jesus is born as the Light of the World and the powerful imagery surrounding this must have been a very practical comfort to generations of country folk.
The greenery too is a comforting celebration of our pagan roots and our strong links with the land which still supports our daily need for food and increasingly, recreation. Take away the Christmas tree and The Holly and the Ivy and for most people that symbolic link with the earth is broken for another year.We of course are fortunate to have holly, ivy AND the running of the deer here on the farm all year round.
It’s no wonder so many people find this a very difficult time of year.There is still a long slog before Spring arrives. Bills have to be paid, decisions pondered over Christmas have to be made or acted upon and for us farmers, we still have the worst of winter ahead of us and several months of hard physical labour feeding animals in tough conditions.
So how to cope I wonder? Well, as I strawed up a new section of barn for my goats yesterday and watched 200 animals pour into a playground of crisp clean barley straw and have a wonderful time munching and skipping around, I reminded myself that the simplicity of the animals is something we can learn from. They remember bad experiences but don’t dwell on them, they remember GOOD experiences and try to replicate them and they value their place in community. However humble the goat’s position in the flock, it becomes very distressed when separated from the others – even if its role is to be “the goat the others love to hate”.
Goats are not philosophers and nor am I but it seems to me, if we watch and learn from the animals that share our lives we can see ways of dealing with our own problems. Simple thoughts worth considering as we face whatever 2013 will bring each of us.
A Happy New Year to you all.
What a wonderful post and you are so right in what you say. We do have a lot to learn from our animlas. When we own buy and breed any animal we have a duty to care for its welfare and well being and if we all followed the Five Freedoms Act the animal world would be a better place. Learning animal behaviour is a vital part of owning any animal. They cannot speak to us but they do speak and tell us through their behaviour. We just need to learn how to read it. I am a huge fan of Temple Grandin – i own all her books
and I teach people her methods. Her movie is often on Sky Atlantic – watch out for it and record it.
A Happy New Year to you and all your members and all your animlas.
Lets hope 2013 is a good one for us all.
By: Dianne Summers on January 2, 2013
at 10:04 am
Well I would leave the lights up until the 2nd of February. That is the next eighth mark of the year and the pagan rituals were transformed into the Feast of St. Lucinda (bringer of the light). In Scandinavian custom a young girl of the household wore a wreath of evergreen with lit candles and woke everyone up that morning. Now days you can get electric lit wreaths to wear so as not to incinerate yourself. That was also the time that the holly was brought in at Winter Solstice was removed from the house. It was believed to be bad luck to keep holly inside after the 2nd of Feb. It might delay the Spring you see.
By: Kathy Kestner on January 2, 2013
at 4:12 pm
Lovely to take in this present moment, wonderful moment. Here the decorations will remain til the Feast of the Three Kings January 6th. And maybe because the tree is still so fresh & I am reluctant to let go of the lights in the night a bit longer. Wishing you and all the herds of people and animals a New Year of health, peace, prosperity in all its forms.
By: Diane Shepherd-in-the-Making on January 2, 2013
at 6:26 pm