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December 25, 2002
Christmas?
So I sit here on Christmas morning, trying to understand what it’s like to have been born, and I listen to Christmas music, because this is its season, and you really can’t listen to it any other time of the year. Many of the Christmas songs are folk songs, such as I’ve talked about recently. This year I keep coming back to the Cherry Tree Carol. It’s based on apocryphal tradition, and certainly doesn’t match any Biblical accounts, but it concerns the Virgin’s pregnancy, and it’s popularly sung as a Christmas carol.It must be the cherries; the blood red fruit.
Or maybe it’s all this talk and song of being born, but I can’t help thinking back to Spring, and that Riddle Song, the one with the cherry without any stone.
And I’m thinking there might be another answer to that riddle.
A Riddle is a little model we make of the Mystery.
Just as Mystery is inexhaustible, a Riddle may have more than one correct answer.
Just as thinking back to Spring is now thinking forward to Spring.
But right now it’s Christmas, and I present you with a Holiday Triad of Riddles:
Who is as a Cherry without any Stone?
Who is Child and Parent at once?
Who is Born with the Reborn Sun?