Christmas Day, 2021

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

~ T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi

There was a time when I would struggle out of sleep on Christmas morning, desperate for caffeine amid jittering children impatient for loot.

Today? Nah. Just me and Little Cat, coffee and tuna pate' and soccer re-runs in the silent morning house. Why the hell was Qatar playing in the CONCACAF Cup semifinal? Fucker was in Eurasia last I checked. Fucking FIFA cash-grab, I suspect.

Finally the crew staggered in and the presents were distributed and everyone got down to the hard business of Christmas Day - napping (parents), gaming (The Boy), and something artistic (The Girl). The cats begged for food, prowled randomly, or napped, although Drachma did have a moment with his new catnip toy:

.

He had to sleep it off under the tree...

Late in the afternoon my Bride concluded that we needed a brisk walk, so we headed out into the gray, rainy, high-thirties evening, down to the little woodlot waste ground along the fringes of St. Johns to walk off excess Christmas Spirit.

And proceeded to immediately come across a dump of cut-up commercial weed.

"Oh Christmas weed, oh Christmas weed, how lovely are your branches..!"

Frankly it was miserable; cold, wet, with a nasty east wind that was just enough to chill any part of you that wasn't covered.

The Girl and I turned back just past the treeline in the distance of the photo above. The Bride kept on going just long enough to show us what weenies we were being, and I'm totally okay with that. That was a rotten ramble.

But we got home to the warmth and the glow of the lights, and the promise of the quiet evening to come.