Ottawa brightens up the Parliament buildings during the holidays with its Christmas Lights Across Canada event that features more than 300,000 lights. Ottawa Tourism/photo
snowbound landscapes and the brilliant
bounty of autumnal harvest; the greens, golds
and orange of pumpkins gleaming in the
fields, great nodding heads of sunflowers,
corn stalks, oats, wheat and barley awaiting
the gathering, and the dull, sunless days
becoming winter just in time for Christmas
a nod away from the anxiety of another
year's end and the start of raw beginnings.
Until then, the practising wind, incessant
rain, by turn hail - snow pellets pinging on
rigidly frozen trees laden with the weight of
freezing rain settled into dour place and the
branches reaching perilously to the ground,
groaning and contorted before eventual release,
expresses our doleful view of this neither-nor
season presenting in muted hues of greys
and browns, gloomy and miserable to the eye.
Little wonder traditions arose to lift the
spirits in a show of seasonal holiday glitter,
glowing lights emulating heavenly bodies
brought to the service of lightening the burden
of the winter pre-season, a time of perishing
life, on the cusp of re-birth. When the dark
curtain of night falls, obscuring the dreary
greys, the resplendent display of light lifts the
aura of despair into a celebration of life.
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