From “First Snow in the Street” by Brian Patten in Christmas Poems, selected by Gaby Morgan:
I did not sleep last night. The falling snow was beautiful and white. I dressed, sneaked down the stairs And opened wide the door. I had not seen such snow before.
Our grubby little street had gone. The world was brand-new, and everywhere There was pureness in the air. I felt such peace. Watching every flake My heart felt more and more awake.
I thought I’d learned all there was to know About the trillion million different kinds Of swirling frosty falling flakes of snow. But that was not so. I did not know how vividly it lit The world with such a peaceful glow….
In the rush of early morning, When the red burns through the gray, And the wintry world lies waiting For the glory of the day. Then we hear a fitful rustling Just without upon the stair, See two small white phantoms coming, Catch the gleam of sunny hair.
Are they Christmas fairies stealing Rows of little socks to fill? Are they angels floating hither With their message of good-will? What sweet spell are these elves weaving, As like larks they chirp and sing? Are these palms of peace from heaven That these lovely spirits bring?
After a feast of sausage-rolls, Sandwiches of various meats, Jewelled jellies, brimming bowls Of chocolate ice and other treats, We children played at Blind Man’s Buff, Hide and Seek, Pin-the-tail-on-Ned, And then — when we’d had just enough Of party-games — we all were led Into another room to see The Magic Show. The wizard held A wand of polished ebony. His white-gloved, flickering hands compelled The rapt attention of us all. He conjured from astonished air A living pigeon and a fall Of paper snowflakes; made us stare Bewildered as a playing card — Unlike a leopard — changed its spots And disappeared. He placed some starred And satin scarves in silver pots, Withdrew them as plain bits of rag. Then swallowed them before our eyes. But soon we felt attention flag And found delighted, first surprise Had withered like a wintry leaf; And, when the tricks were over, we Applauded, yet felt some relief, And left the party willingly. ‘Goodnight,’ we said, ‘and thank you for The lovely time we’ve had.’ Outside, The freezing night was still. We saw Above our heads the slow clouds stride Across the vast unswallowable skies; White, graceful gestures of the moon, The stars’ intent and glittering eyes. And, gleaming like a silver spoon, The frosty path to lead us home. Our breath hung blossoms on unseen Boughs of air as we paused there, And we forgot that we had been Pleased briefly by that conjuror, Could not recall his tricks, or face, Bewitched and awed, as now we were, By magic of the common place.
Here we go again!
Once upon a time, in the winter of 2019, I started a “Days to Christmas” project to experiment with photography, camera settings, and lighting techniques using various holiday figurines, baubles, and trinquettes as my photo subjects. It somehow (?!?) became a tradition, so once again, for 2025, here we have the first post in this year’s series.
Working indoors with interior and artificial lighting is a lot different than most of my photography, which is of course outdoors in natural light. While this whole project can seem a bit effortful at times, every year it teaches me something new, especially about how to manage light when — unlike outdoor natural light — you can manipulate its characteristics yourself. When photographing Christmas subjects, we tend to emulate how we visualize the season: contrasts between colors like red and green, bright lights against dark backgrounds, or explosions of colors and textures like those of a Christmas tree. During the first couple of years of this project, I typically took photos as night fell to capture those effects; with practice I’ve learned to manage lighting so that I can take photos during the day and simulate what we might see when the sun goes down. The photos in this post, for example, were all taken around mid-day yesterday, yet I (hope) I’ve managed to evoke the Christmas metaphor of warm lights opposing the darkness of winter — one of this season’s intuitively understood visual themes.
The poem I selected for this year’s first post reflects similar visual scenes, as its characters move from the frenetic opening lines to end up in the quieter “magic of the common place” — something that echoes the seasonal transition from chaotic first days to Christmas Day itself. Finding poems that resonate with the work I do for this series is as much fun as the photography itself, and there will be at least one such poem (and some prose) for all of the posts.
If you’d like to see any of the projects from previous years, here they are:
“Clematis are now one of the most important groups of garden plants, with dwarf ones, ideal for small gardens, balconies and even window boxes, selling in their millions. The plants have, however, come a long way. The very modestly flowering European species appear to have been grown in gardens from the sixteenth century onwards, but it was the opening up of China and Japan in the nineteenth century that led to the large-flowered hybrids we know today. Far Eastern growers had for centuries had plants with showy flowers and, crucially, a tendency to flower on side shoots. This ability to flower low down makes them very useful as garden plants, as is shown by the habit of growing them on obelisks made from wooden trellis.
“A breakthrough was made in 1858 by the English nurseryman George Jackman, who crossed an existing hybrid with the European C. viticellaand the East Asian C. lanuginosa. The resulting showy, vigorous plant proved a huge success. Meanwhile, C. montana had arrived from the Himalayas, introduced by the wife of the governor general of British India. It too was a great success, clambering up the sides of British country houses, along garden walls and even to the tops of quite substantial trees, smothering everything with pink flowers for a few weeks in early summer….
“From the great botanic gardens of St Petersburg came C. tangutica in the late nineteenth century, a botanical outcome of the ‘great game’, when British and Russian explorers were both investigating, and seeking to dominate, Central Asia. It and similar species are vigorous, and their strangely thick yellow petals are borne, usefully, in late summer.”
Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day, I paused and said, ‘I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther — and we shall see.’ The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home…. And then there was a pile of wood… It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled-and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year’s cutting, Or even last year’s or the year’s before. The wood was grey and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken.
Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle….
Hello!
This is the second of two posts featuring photos of resurgent Clematis from my garden. The first post — with my backyard history of these plants — is Hello, Clematis! (1 of 2).
As with the previous post, here we start with some of the buds and vines posing in the morning sun. These are followed by images of full flowers — those with prominent purple or pink stripes through their petals, possibly theClematis lanuginosa variant described in the quotation above. Toward the end, there are closeups of the Clematis flower’s complex central structure.
