Advent calendar 21 - Yule fox...

I was up early this morning. Well, I think it was early, it's so hard to tell with the dark mornings and too short, short days. Anyway it was early enough for me to catch a fox sneaking around in our front garden. I have no idea what he was doing, but he barely stopped to wish me a happy Yuletide before he shot off across the road and disappeared up a driveway.

Back to the country house I expect.

So here is another Winter Solstice and Yuletide begins. From here-on-in the days should begin to lengthen, at least in theory with today being the shortest day. It won't seem like it for weeks though.

That's the thing with the winter darkness. It's cumulative. It builds up in your mind until you think that it is never going to be light again and that the sunshine was just a trick played on you by some goddamned awful god. The god of winter, the King of Yule.

Time to fetch the Yule Log to keep his darkness away.

Of course I can't fit an entire tree into my fireplace like they did in the old days. But I have picked my Yule log from the stack of logs in the cellar and it will be burning on Christmas Day to keep the dark spirits at bay. Actually I have picked four or five, well it really isn't that big a hearth, and I will keep them burning all day long on the day of days.

As for the fox. Well he's welcome to come in and lie by the fire, but I think he'll have to fight Luna for it first.