Light in the dark.

It is rather easy to feel like a failure at Christmas.  The crafts that go unrealized, the visiting that gets short circuited and the gifts that never get made or bought. Undiluted expectations get created and then begrudingly let go of. New expectations get found and half met. The light dims to almost nothing until today.  We hastily blaze up the candles and the lights and the tinsel to feel less alone in the dark. 

Then we wake up after the solstice and there is a smidgen more light than the day before.  We prepare to live the following days in the half light, trying our best to live freer from expectation and catch the light any way we can.