Bells toll midnight in villages strewn across a globe on a clear, cold Christmas Eve. Stand in new starlight. Blow white puffs of what, may chance, take form and make a haunting. See there! By a crowned tree waits a Crone. She knows old and true stories which beg not to be forgotten. Come, listen.

It’s up to you to find what meaning you will.

 

 

There once lived a crone in a world that had forgotten Spirit and thus tried to find comfort where there was none.   

Each evening she walked a village arranged on cliffs by a winter’s heaving sea. Clutching an oil lamp in her crooked hands, she composed new lyrics to sing. For she believed if only she could find the right words, people might know there yet existed on earth a Flame. But no one paid any attention whatsoever to the crone. Or to her beloved, carefully-worded songs.

By the time she went back inside, frost covered her coat, billowing skirt, and boots. She lit a fire in the pipe stove, and the frost melted to make a puddle on the floor.

This attempt to comfort her village with new songs went on every night. The crone sang, no one cared, she lit a fire at home afterward, and frost melted into a puddle. She’d drip water about the house as she hobbled from room to room.   

So dark had the world become without Spirit that the crone soon used up all her split logs. With a pipe stove empty of fire, the puddles in the crone’s house hardened into ice. Everywhere she’d traipsed and dripped transformed into a slippery space.

Snow hares moved in and played sliding games of chase. This the crone enjoyed, but otherwise she lamented the case that she could not thaw out.

She remained a frosty crone.   

Villagers believed she had died and become a ghost. For on the cliffs she wandered, white. And faintly luminous, when there was moonlight.

“She’s a ghost or gone mad,” they diagnosed.

They observed her staring at the night sky, at the sort of new, bright star that could find a place in myth. A few suggested she missed a sweetheart, for smitten women—no matter how old—oft dwell lovesick at the edge of windswept cliffs.

In fact, this sensible guess was true. The crone, at her sweetly ripened old age, had commenced a lofty romance located in the heavens. She’d fallen in love with a star. Naturally, this made the crone look forward to the coming of Christmas.

She decided to do some shopping in the village. How scandalized she was to see no Christmas tree in the village square! As she shuffled along the icy cobblestones to her favorite shop, she heard a shriek. When she reached the door of the shop, she found it locked—with no wreath. Frightened faces peeped out the window at her. The crone marveled at what to think. She had no idea the villagers believed her to be either a ghost or given to madness.

Since falling in love, she’d forgotten that others had no reason for end-of-year gladness. The crone went home to her icicled cottage and thought what she might do to help. As usual, she believed she must write words to sing.  

Come Christmas Eve, she kept her distance so as not to alarm anyone. She stood yonder from wreathless cottage doors and sang both old and newly composed carols from the shadows.

The villagers were not tricked. “It’s the ghost or mad woman again,” they told one another. “Either way, let us have nothing to do with her.” They refused to open their doors and listen.

The crone hobbled away in dismay.

“I am old and small and insignificant,” she told the star she loved. “No words I sing can make any difference in this world. It is too dark and Spirit too far away. And too cold. Oh, how bitter cold it is!”

So bitter cold it truly was that the crone’s long skirt widened with fresh frost dredged from fog which lay upon the earth she walked.

The villagers saw her silhouette on the cliffs in the moonlight. And there were a few who perceived at a distance an aged woman’s beauty, for her full-skirted silhouette appeared like a fine vase caught in a timeless glimmer. Yet they did not try to speak to her for they knew no words could help anything. They left her alone.

The crone became all the more certain that she had no words to give that anyone wanted, and this frightened her.

“I have to face it,” she said. “The world is not in want of me.”   

At this, a heavenly bell tolled. Waves lifted and the sea sprayed magic upon the crone. She fell fast asleep there on the cliffs with seawater falling in hallowed crystals upon her, and she dreamed a beautiful dream.

When she wakened, there was no need to ponder. She made a fire of her favorite rocking chair in the pipe stove and merrily tossed her tin cookie cutters into the flames. There they stayed until scorching hot.

Wearing her thickest mittens, the crone used red hot cookie cutters to cut out shapes from the ice encasing her cottage. These she hung like glass ornaments all over her frosty body. All day she worked and, when ready, tottered outside beneath the clear night sky as the village bells tolled twelve.

The star she loved took one look at the ornamented crone and fell hard.

Plummeting from the sky, the star landed upon the crone’s head. She was literally lovestruck at this and wandered upon a midnight clear to the center of the village singing songs.    

The star from the heavens was as cold as it was bright. Its coldness trickled into the crone until she slowed into a profound stillness. So quiet became her mind and heart that her singing stopped. There in the village square, she froze solid. Her breath became like flakes of snow, and the wind blew them all around her. Her mouth iced over in the shape of an O.

This was so astonishing that all the earth fell Silent.  

The star’s glow seeped into the crone and she became so bright as to be blinding.

This light streamed into the windows of the cottages throughout the village, and the people came out to stand in awe at the haunting before them:

Snow flurries whipping about a frosted Christmas tree, doused in ornaments of ice and aglow with a star on top. Once their excited shouts fell away, they heard the Silence.

And were comforted.

Joy overwhelmed every woman, man, and child. Chased by snow hares, the villagers ran to their cottages and soundlessly returned with gifts. These they lay beneath the tree at an old woman’s feet.

Throughout the long night, the villagers fixed their eyes upon the star come to give Silence.

This same story happens every Christmas Eve. The crone becomes a star-crowned tree each end-of-December with her mouth in a Silent O, though now she returns from the heavens to do so.

Would you like to see her? She Is cold and bright with Flame amidst swirling snow on Christmas Eve. She’s really there. She exists. But please, do not believe.

Freeze.

Be still and know.

Do you see what I see? Lovestruck stars are falling from heaven. At this impossible and soundless sight, your mouth forms upon this earth its own Silent O

Holy

Night.

 

 

 

 

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I wish you happy, peaceful, comforting holidays.

 

Featured image of Christmas tree in snow by Gerd Altmann

Star in sky image also by Gerd Altmann

Sorry! I have no credit to give for snowflake image

Choir image by Free Vector Images