Christmas Card Mysteries: No 8

Christmas Day!

Surely, at last, the mystery is over and revelation begins.

Yet we remember those angels declaring peace to humankind and we see our world, even our neighbourhoods, no more peaceful and possibly less so as a New Year begins.  It is a mystery.  But this beautiful, troubling card helps.

With a little detective work (because we have had many canal holidays) I worked out that this is a picture of the Kennet and Avon Canal in Bath.  The text inside reads Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always.  The picture is certainly peaceful if one were to measure it in decibels. The crunch of footsteps in the snow and that's about it I imagine.

My recollection of this section of canal is that we became stuck on it in a lock and in a fairly scary place where it joins a river.  No peace there.  And given Bath's geography, evident enough in the picture, a decent snowfall is going to bring distress as well as peace.  Slippery pavements, impassable hills, cancelled events.  

The pictured idyll overlays a dark unease.  

Whereas Christmas? On Christmas Day it's worth reflecting that it is really the opposite.  Most of the participants in the first Christmas were dislodged or distressed at some stage - the mother, the shepherd, the fiance, the wise men, king Herod, the bereaved parents of Bethlehem, the children of Bethlehem.  

But the pictured disruptions and deaths overlayed a bright peace, in which and to which we continue to move.