On the Threshold

I have always found this time of year to be slightly ethereal – a combination of consumptionfest and time with friends and family, based on a long history of pagan festivals around winter solstice. Borrowed and repurposed as “Christmas” in the same way at St Nicholas, in his various forms, was repurposed as Father Christmas to market Coca Cola.

Underneath its crass commercialisation, this is a valuable time of year. For most of us, from today until the beginning of January, we enter something of a liminal space between the departing year and the new one arriving. It is a valuable time. A space between the everyday routines of the shortest response time to stimulus. Reflection more than Reflexion.

What has gone well in the last year, what not so well, and what have we learned about ourselves as we enter another irreplaceable year?

Clarity and contentment sit on a different plane to the modern gods of material success we are brought up to worship, and we can take a moment to consider; how …