The bleak midwinter reflected in our backyard pond

If you invite an astronomer and a meteorologist to your Christmas party, make sure they don’t start talking about the seasons.  It could get ugly.  The astronomer will insist that winter doesn’t start until 4:21 tomorrow morning, and the meteorologist will tell him it began back on December 1.  In our nothing-is-simple world, it turns out that the scientists can’t agree on when the seasons start and end.  So, we have meteorological winter which began this year the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and astronomical winter that won’t begin until early tomorrow morning.

English poet Christina Rossetti wasn’t much concerned about the science of the seasons when she wrote about the bleak midwinter.  Whether it was 25 days or four days into winter, she wrote about that first Christmas long ago and its setting in bleak midwinter. Nor was she concerned about all those articles by the nitpicking scholars purporting to tell us when Christmas “really happened.”  (Likely not December 21, and almost certainly not in the year 1 A.D. – no year zero in our Gregorian calendar.)

Rosetti’s bleak midwinter describes our world in ways the astronomer and the meteorologist may not understand. Her bleak midwinter does not look forward to the inevitability of earlier sunrises and later sunsets.  It anticipates something much better.

Consider the first stanza of the poem which has become a favorite hymn for many:

In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter
long ago.

As 2024 draws to a tumultuous close, it seems as if earth stands hard as iron, water like a stone.  Political upheaval around the world, wars that will not end, a culture that has lost the ability to recognize what is good and true and right. In our own lives we are reminded that disease and death and loss are no respecters of persons. Life in the bleak midwinter cannot count on the return of earlier sunrises and later sunsets.

But then the second stanza:

Our God, heaven cannot hold him
nor earth sustain;
heaven and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign:
in the bleak mid-winter
a stable-place sufficed
the Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Our journey to the vernal equinox and the summer solstice offers no salvation to those of us living our lives in the bleak midwinter.  But our God does.  Our celebration in the bleak midwinter is not about the promise of spring and summer.  It is about one for whom a stable-place sufficed.  It is about God with us, the Lord Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Finally, the last stanza:

What can I give him,
poor as I am?
if I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
if I were a wise man
I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him,
give my heart.

Those living their lives in the bleak midwinter have something to do.  What can we give him?  Give him our hearts.