It’s Christmas morning, and all is indeed calm. The animals and my partner and I snuggled under a warm blanked until rather late, doing nothing but lie there in the stillness of an extended family of mammals. Four cats, one dog, two humans – all had warmth to share.

Eventually, we all felt an urge to wander around and look for amusement. August, our Westie, had to make his trip out in the snow. That accomplished, our noble white sentry was awake, and had to drag everyone out of bed. It was time to start the day.

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I recently learned that my youngest child still believes in Santa.

This might take some explaining. I have a strict policy of never lying to the kids about anything. They either get a straight answer to a question, or a reason why they won’t get a straight answer. Being a divorced father, however, the determination of my kids’ mythology isn’t entirely up to me. “Mythology” is the nice word for “lies”, or more accurately “lies that reflect the way we have decided to look at the world no matter what reality has to say about it”. Not that I’m bitter.

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It is dark outside, a combination of the shortest day and a deep, mystical fog. The usual 8 hours and 41 minutes of daylight we can expect has been snuggled under what feels like a ground-hugging cloud, akin to being tucked under a warm blanket.

This is the end of the year traditionally. The new year should begin at Solstice, as is the ancient European tradition, just as the day begins at midnight. The only reason it doesn’t is that the Romans used a calendar, the Julian, that was off a bit by the time Pope Gregory XIII got around to revising it and everything moved ten days. No matter. The world since the Renaissance has always been what we decree, not what we see.

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