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The no-man’s land, between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning…

December 24, 2022 by 25 Comments

There are a few hours each year that belong to no day. The no-man’s land, between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning…

Morning kneels quietly at our feet, opening its pale palms out to us.

Merry Christmas, lovely, he says, so gently…

Look outside! The daughter is practically screaming. During the no-man’s hours, it has snowed. It is not that thick, muzzle-clean snow, but it is enough to glaze the landscape with a pure sheet of ivory light. Enough to give us all the sense that time has paused, just for today. We decide that seeing something for the first time is much the same as seeing it for the last.

Let it snow

Let it snow

Let it snow

— Maddie Mortimer, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador; March 31, 2022)

Portrait of Maddie Mortimer from The Times

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Christmas Eve (3:44 a.m) … and Magic

December 24, 2018 by 32 Comments

And Lindsay captures it wonderfully in her photo above and in her post titled “Snow Falling” – while I sit here in darkness, early this morning, watching snow fall on Christmas Eve:

“There is something absolutely magical about snow falling. I am always in awe of the eerie silence that falls around the house as it lightly touches down on our roof and the ground around us. I love how from somewhere it picks up little hints of light so it resembles glitter falling all around you…It was magnificent. It was glorious to be able to lean up against the window and just watch the big flakes fall luxuriously down around us. Something about snow makes me feel like a little kid all over again.”

Inspired by: “—light snow, silence, the empty streets, the fog, thrilling cold—so much beauty. Like breathing pure oxygen.” ~ Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

 

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It happened on Christmas Eve, 48 years ago.

December 24, 2016 by 16 Comments

earth

It happened on Christmas Eve, 48 years ago. Three men took turns reading from the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis. They were nearly 250,000 miles away from Bethlehem, but since it was the night before Christmas, and there was no chimney from which to hang their stockings, the three astronauts inside the Apollo 8 capsule orbiting the moon thought it would be appropriate. So as Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders looked at the faraway Earth through the small window of the spacecraft, they read the verses: “In the beginning, God made the heavens and the Earth.”

Their distant-sounding voices from far beyond our atmosphere were broadcast live to the whole planet that night over radio and television. It was one of those moments that brought the world together, that helped us to see our common humanity…

~ Eric Metaxas, from Christmas Eve in Space and Communion on the Moon (wsj.com, Dec, 24, 2016)

 

Photo: Earth (Great Lakes). Canadian Space Agency/Chris Hadfield via Space.com

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