lesleyjonesberry

I am writing Christmas cards. Every year I resolve to write them early; every year I end up harassed by the last-posting dates. I don’t tend to give cards to people I see in the ‘here and now’. My list is almost entirely a ritual of recalling the past, my past. Such as: two college friends I haven’t seen for over forty years. They weren’t my closest friends, but we met in the first week and three years later we graduated together; they were reliable and stable. The fact of their continuing to participate each year in this small, trivial exchange provides reassurance of something.

Yesterday, we moved the table in the kitchen.

Kitchens are important rooms. While the whole house provides shelter, the kitchen provides food. It’s a space which is absolutely core to the idea of ‘home’ and our essential needs. It matters that we feel comfortable there.

If you’ve ever reworked your own kitchen, you’ll perhaps share my feeling that a refit feels like choosing an entire lifestyle. The one time we did this, I felt assaulted by the level of expectation. The marketing told me a kitchen ought to have pristine surfaces, centre islands, sophisticated coffee-making facilities, carefree sociability. The kind of place where one tosses back one’s mane of glossy hair, laughing gaily while holding a huge shiny, smudge-free glass which is just a quarter full of golden wine. Frankly, they were kitchens where I’d need to be redesigned as well. 

6^th January is Epiphany. A major feast day in the Church calendar which has, as soon as we open Wikipedia, a multiplicity of names and associations including Little Christmas and Three Kings Day. It offers, apparently, a choice of things to celebrate. The Visit of the Magi takes the lead in Western Christianity with a wonderfully over-literal suggestion that we need to allow the wise men some travel time, so we spend twelve days waiting for them to arrive at the stable (Or wherever the infant Christ is dwelling: one hopes the census-driven over-crowding has abated and that, picturesque as the stable looks in the paintings, the Holy Family has a more comfortable abode by now).  Eastern Christians, on the other hand, celebrate Christ’s baptism at Epiphany, the start of his adult ministry.  And the wedding at Cana – the first miracle – also gets a look in.  The common theme seems to be the manifestation of the divine to the whole of humanity. Not merely a Jewish messiah, Jesus is shown to be the saviour to all mankind. Epiphany is such a great word and means ‘revelation’ (from the Greek, epiphainein – to reveal). We can all have epiphanies, at any time. Moments of realisation and insight. Epiphany is a blazing, golden word full of positive, energy, immense power. Epiphany sounds like trumpets; it is bright yellow; its mood is overwhelmingly joyous.