Well, it's December and only 24 days until Christmas. It seems as though last Christmas was not all that long ago. When I was a kid, it seemed very long between Christmases. In the summer, I would sometimes get a strong nostalgia and yearning for Christmas, which was so far away. I would look at a booklet we had of Christmas carols and dream about Christmas. I would feel sad that it was hardly worth thinking about it because it was so distant. It was like I would be a whole other person by the time it came. The me who was now would never see it. But now, I think, Ah, so quickly. Christmas again.
I keep thinking of a phrase from this verse of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear":
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold,
When the new heaven and earth shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
"The ever-circling years": the same events and holidays keep coming around. But I think that the circle is really a spiral. It gets smaller every year, so that you go around faster and faster. And I suppose at the center of the spiral you disappear from this place and pass into another realm, eternity. Which is to say "the new heaven and earth," "by prophets seen of old," "the time foretold."
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