Happy last-day-of-Chanukah! This is the menorah I've had since I was little. It's rickety but I love its brass curlicues and the way the doors open to reveal the ten commandments and I love lighting candles every night. Be warned: this is probably the schmaltziest post I've written all year, but schmaltz really just means oil and Chanukah's the festival of oil as well as light, so there.
So this year, Chanukah coincided with the winter solstice. That morning, I woke up early, in a house in Cullercoats, near Newcastle. I'd gone up the night before to see my friend Stephen Sharkey's heartwarming, romantic play The Glass Slipper, and despite all the wine we'd drunk to celebrate how good it was, I'd woken to the sun rising pink and gold and perfect over the fabulously bleak and rugged Northumbrian coast. I pulled wellington boots and a coat on over my pajamas and went to stand in the sea, and thought about the tilted spin of the earth and the days getting longer and how the festivals of light (Chanukah and solstice) had coincided, and how that felt somehow lucky.
And now I've lit the last Chanukah candles of the year, and the chicken we roasted for Christmas is simmering away to make chicken soup, and as ever, I'm trying to think up the best resolutions to ensure the happiest possible 2012, but for now I just wanted to make a wish, in general, for more light.
0 comments:
Post a Comment