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We lifted him up to put the fairy on the top of the tree the fairy we have always used which has wings

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We lifted him up to put the fairy on the top of the tree, the fairy we have always used, which has wings made out of cooking foil and vivid ginger hair. He will take hold of our wrists as he leads us further into the depths. Perhaps the darkest place of all is not the threatening dark around us but our own unplumbed selves; places where in the razzmatazz of the modern Christmas we have no time to go.The shrouded silence of January gives us the opportunity to recollect ourselves, to enter trustingly with Christ into that pregnant darkness of Creation and to find inner peace there. A careful reading of the Gospel will take us not away from darkness but deeper into it, but in the company of Christ who understands our fears because he has gone before us and experienced not only the depressive darkness of the winter months but the dark moments of life.

With the angels from the Christmas tree back in their box for another year, who will give us a hand in the darkness to see us through the bleak months ahead while we grope towards the light of spring?The dark can threaten unknown horrors or it can spell peace. Darkness renders us fearful and dependent, like the blind being led by the hand. In the brashness of Christmas we may have forgotten the job insecurity, the credit-cardbalance mounting up with each present bought, but the dull days of January pull us back to a murky reality which is insecure and uncertain. Whether these dark moments bring glory or desolation, Christ sh a res them with humanity. Christianity does not take them away any more than night or winter can be dissolved by electric light.

But it does give them meaning.To accept that one must have trust Light gives us self-confidence, self-sufficiency. The Gospels also describe the agonising darkness of Gethsemane and the terrifying darkness at noon of the Crucifixion. At times like Christmas we may be able to soar upwards, to attain an unaccustomedspiritual level But we cannot remain there. No amount of fairy lights, or even talk of not putting the clocks back, can turn winter twilight into the brilliance of summer sun. The state of darkness is our predicament, part of the rhythm of all life. Even if it often takes the form of a depression of body and soul, it is at one with the natural world, like the dull grey of a cloudy sky or the skeletal black of winter trees.

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