Monday December 26, 2005

Wren Day

“St. Stephen’s Day [Dec. 26] is a national holiday in Ireland, but the celebrations have little connection to the Saint.”

This day in Ireland is instead devoted to a barbaric ritual, “the hunting of the wren.”

Let us therefore recall a more civilized figure– St. Christopher Wren— whose feast day is Feb. 25.

From Log24 on that date in 2005:

… Only by the form,
    the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as
    a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin,
    while the note lasts,
Not that only, but
    the co-existence,
Or say that the end
    precedes the beginning,
And the end
    and the beginning
    were always there
Before the beginning
    and after the end.
And all is always now.

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets