Brexival Begins

And so we enter the dark days. The year dies screaming as the sun plunges below the horizon, earlier each evening. The tawny owl quivers, and dreams of the blood of voles.

And we reach the trickiest-pronounced day of the year. The day the Celts wrote as "Samhain". Except of course they didn't, as they have left no written record from the days when they celebrated the occasion. It's worth, however, noting how to pronounce the word. It's not how you would expect. Although written as "Samhain", it's pronounced "Halloween".

This year we've decided to go for an all-embracing feast that celebrates all things light shining in the darkness. The hope that cannot be extinguished. The life in the heart of the most deep-frozen crocus bulb. The pink bow tied around the neck of Fenrir Wolf. And we're combining the whole 3 months from Diwali to the end of January as the time of Brexival.

It's an interval between the Brexit that never was, and the Brexit that may never be. A time of Schrodinger's Brexit, when the benefits are all promised and yet not realised, and yet simultaneously non-existent. Time stands balanced between two years. The Sun descends towards the depths of the earth*. And we look forward in fear, and backwards with more fear. We ask ourselves, as the time of Brexival brings together Diwali, DieInADitchDay, Samhain, Guy Fawkes, All Saints, All Souls, Advent, Yule, Hanukkah, Xmas, New Year,  the death of Thomas Hardy, the birth of David Bowie and Burns Night: what on earth are we doing here? Why? And will it ever stop?

And we shudder at the knock on the door. Will it be a bunch of kids dressed as witches and goblins? Or a politician come to tell us how, if we go for their type of Brexit, we will be happy to be much poorer for no reason?

So we carve our punkies and stick them on the spikes on the main gate. Dress up as Nigel Farage and go around scaring kids. Or dress up as Boris Johnson and get chased around the place, like some post-modern Benny Hill, by angry husbands. And we light the fires against the dark. And know the light means something.

* May not apply in New Zealand

---

Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? (or to shudder at death at any rate? Then here's two ways you can keep the Archdruid in doilies...
If you want someone to share the terrors of death while making you laugh, we have "A Hint of Death in the Morning Air" - 97 poems to make you wonder, laugh or shake your head sadly. At only £1 on Kindle. Or if you want to know what the people in the pews really think, and you prefer your words printed on paper, why not try "Writes of the Church"?  The letters to the Church magazine the vicar really didn't need.