Scatter the darkness

I hate winter. Truly. Mostly, I hate snow. And ice, and sleet, and cleaning snow drifts off my car, and lamenting snowed out events, and being bitten by shards of ice as I walk in the elements…

As a writer, I have always felt that somehow, I have failed the name of artists everywhere; that I should have a deep love of snow, delighting in its glow under a full moon like a silver-grey blanket, watching it pile up like fluffy cotton on the pine trees outside my window, and drinking in the pure white silence of its presence as it muffles the world. But I don’t. With one exception: Christmas.

Christmas, to me, has always been the one bright spot that exuded rays of light into the gray nights.

When I was a child, my mom would buy those huge tins of popcorn (the caramel was always my favorite), and my siblings and I would snuggle on the couch as my parents turned off all the lights except the twinkling tree lights. I remember the colors – the way they broke through the darkness in a splay of colors – how if I squinted my eyes I saw the blurs of a rainbow in the shape of a Christmas tree – and how that triangular shape drew my eyes up to the ceiling where the colors spread in needled patterns across the ceiling.

Now, as a mother of two small ones and keeper of my own house for almost a decade, I still imitate that tradition every year. Though each time I flip a switch that darkens the room, for me, the tradition feels like turning on a light.

We do live in a dark world. Whether that is literal darkness, or figurative darkness, truth is, the shadows of evil lurk at the edges of our vision.

When Christmas season comes, I am reminded that, in the midst of the cold and gray and darkness, a new creation is calling. So I celebrate – I celebrate with colors and glitter and candles and lights and greenery and ribbon and ornaments and feasting. I celebrate because I believe that the very act of celebrating is waging a war against the shadows – sending them scuttling away in fear at the light to which we play host.

I probably shouldn’t feel compelled to ever like winter or snow. If I remember to celebrate light in the midst of winter, I think I will be alright.

So Merry Christmas to you all – may the brilliance of this Christmas dispel the dark, and may your celebrations this year usher the coming of our Light of the World.

“Christ the Sun of Righteousness shine upon you, and scatter the darkness from before your path, and make you ready to meet Him when He comes in glory; and the blessing of God almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.” – (Book of Common Worship, 1980)

The featured image is courtesy of Julie Jablonski and used with her generous permission for The Cultivating Project. 

Christina Brown

A founding member of The Cultivating Project, Christina has been fascinated by beauty her whole life. Color, texture, pattern, fragrance, melody, light – all of the boundless ways in which creation shines – ignites her imagination, compelling her to create. Even as a wee sprite, Christina was dedicated to wordsmithing and sketching her way through its marvels in an attempt to capture, at least partially, the imprint of the Creator within it. But writing and drawing are not her only creative endeavors; several years ago she took on the laborious (but rewarding) task of nurturing a garden in the dismal soils of the Rocky Mountain foothills, and has eagerly employed her spade (alongside her pen) as a tool to cultivate and curate the beauty around her. 

She has two little gardeners-in-training who embody all these marvels and more in their merry little faces. She and her husband Brian are the founders of the Anselm Society based in Colorado Springs, whose mission and calling is a renaissance of the Christian Imagination. She serves as the Director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild and her creative work can be found at LiveBeautiful.today and on Instagram.