Zeborah

Someone's opinion piece in the newspaper suggested that we could stop shops starting Christmas too early by inventing a Kiwi seasonal holiday to celebrate around about now instead. She then created and elaborated on one but I'd tuned out because:

a) we already have two seasonal holidays around about now: as much as I dislike the importation of Halloween it is very much a thing, and as much as I'd prefer to commemorate Parihaka on the 5th of November than celebrate Guy Fawkes, that is very much a thing too (albeit its commercial aspects are somewhat more circumscribed by law). And

b) the existence of these holidays has demonstrably done nothing to prevent shops starting with the Christmas already. The instance that particularly horrified me the other day was walking into my local supermarket through the gauntlet of Halloween, and a few minutes later walking to the checkout through the gauntlet of Advent calendars.

Halloween then Guy Fawkes then Christmas, I ragetweeted.

And then yesterday morning, when I went out to pick some lettuce for my lunch sandwiches, I discovered that the Christmas lilies are poking their weird anenome heads out of the ground among the remains of the daffodils.

So, fine. The garden has spoken. Christmas is coming.

I speak of course not of Christmas but of a shallow mag 4.9 aftershock centred not 10 minutes walk from my parents' house (about half an hour's from mine). (This followed a lower magnitude bunch in the night and early morning, all in town. This earthquake series hasn't been very active right in town - usually it's 20km SW - but when it is this close it's quite noticeable.) Piano swaying, cupboards banging, twitter offering reports of malls closing (on Boxing Day. There goes the economy again) and people crying in the aisles and a building roof caving in (I'm presuming it was empty or there'd be much more talk of that) and power outages and such.

...Dude. Serious cracks in Ballantynes? </rumour> I hate shopping there myself: they seem to eschew signage on the grounds that if you don't know where things are you clearly don't belong at such a high class establishment, but it is a bit of an icon.

My family's tended to lose power in the bigger ones so I gave them a call: this time they kept power but lost internet (presumably their ISP has lost power). (Ah, they've just got it back now.)

There goes another siren, joy.

[ETA: Twitter news continues apace. One has to take it all with a grain of salt [ETA bis: for example, for "roof caving in" read "some ceiling tiles down"...] but it's so much faster than conventional news.]

Christmas, however, was great, with all our family traditions plus some non-traditional glorious weather; and spending Boxing Day morning watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special while sitting on the floor by an interior wall isn't really anything to complain about.

[Incidentally, there was a 7.6 near Vanuatu in the night, somewhat before our ones started waking me up. I don't know how this would have affected the areas there, it'll depend much on local geology and construction and so forth, and early reports haven't yet heard of damage or fatalities but... I'm keeping an eye on it.]

Christmas is traditionally a winter thing, but here in New Zealand it comes in summer. In the north the days are dark; in the south the days are long. And when our winter comes, it will be the north's turn for the long days. The earth keeps turning, and no matter how dark it is in one place, there is always light somewhere.

93 years ago, in the midst of the trenches of World War I, both German and British set down their guns and joined to celebrate Christmas together, singing carols, eating dinner, and playing football.

Even in the summer (unless one lives much farther south than I) night comes. Tonight at 11:30 my mother and I went up to a beautiful church on the hill, where all the lights had been turned off and we sang by the light of the candles we were each given. A couple of minutes before midnight we began singing "Silent Night" and as we sang "Shepherds quake at the sight / Glories stream from heaven afar" the minister lit the Christ candle in the wreath. "Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!" And when the carol was finished, we blew out our candles as the lights were turned on again.

The closing prayer reminded us that there is yet misery in the world. That is never to be forgotten or denied. But it would be just as wrong to forget or deny that there is also joy. There is war; and there is peace. There is hatred, and there is love.

There is darkness; and here, today, is a great light.

Merry Christmas.