Tea And Solstice

This story may strike you as odd, but it is true and happened very recently, just about the week before Christmas. I was in the kitchen preparing a pot of tea (Some of "Grace Tea, NY" 's finest. I drink about 6 to 8 cups of tea per day. It bucks me up, as they say, and takes the place of coffee and spiritous drinks.). I had finished placing the tea leaves into a largish tea bag of recycled filter paper and was placing the tea bag into the pot. Now I have a friend who lives in Toronto. Earlier in 2007 his father passed. His mother had gone on a few years earlier, and I had always had fond memories of both of them, for they had invited me, a callow and decidedly odd youth, into their home on visits to Toronto the Good. As I placed the tea bag into the pot, I was thinking of Christmassy things needing to be done, needing to be undone (if that were the defect to be remedied), and other things for men of goodwill to ponder at the season. I thought of my friend's father, then fancied I heard his mother sort of inspire me with the caveat that I should not let those who have gone from us to be forgotten this time of year: her husband...my mother-in-law...my sister-in-law's father...my uncle, my cousin (whom I hadn't seen since he was a rotund smiling babe)... The Solstice signalled the return of the sun-hence the festivals at this time of year-and I for one think that a celebration of Christ's birth at the Solstice was an inspired choice by the old greybeards of yore. Hardly being threatened by Paganism, we exult in the greater light which God made. So...the Solstice is a perfect time for this recall, and the return of the Sun could be induced into a symbol of Resurrection of us all. Of course, how does one do it? I mean, what is the best way to introduce prayer into the midst of an extended family whose members causes echoes of the Peacock Brothers from the X-Files to ring in one's ears? We went to my parents' place for Xmas. They had always been pious "Seveners", meaning they worshipped openly one day of seven. If there was any worship on the other six, it was not known to me. Since they were also not big on an established prayer before the festal engorgement, I felt that it would be presumptuous of me to suddenly demand that people not only bow their stiff necks in thanks, but also to spend a moment to remember those who have gone from us. So I did not do it then. (The Xmas dinner was appalling; not for the food, but for the outrageousness of certain relatives. Perhaps I shall tell you the story when I have reached a point of comfort with it.) We toasted the new year last night and recalled those gone. Tonight we shall do it again and remember their names and a bit of silence and a dab of prayer. I'm still not sure when the best time of the season is to do this. I mean, the season is like Twelfth Night, or 12 nights extending for Xmas to Little Xmas, which will be January 6th this year. (Come to think of it, it is always January 6th. Good. That makes it ever so much easier to remember, not like that bloody July the 4th fiasco I go through every year.) Of course, the tree comes down after Little Xmas, unless you are Germanic relatives of She-who-must-be-obeyed, in which case it stays up, dry and hazardous, until the Kaiser's birthday. So exactly when in the 12 nights to do this remembrance is not clear to me, for it is brand new, so to speak. Regardless of the timing, it is the thought that matters. I sense that some folks I can no longer see are smiling somewhere.