On The First Day of Christmas

In the Twelve Days of Christmas ... Christmas Blessings.

This is a watercolour painting with raised details highlighted with gold embossing powder that I made as a Christmas card twelve years ago for D (without the text across the image).
 I'm using it as a button in my sidebar to link to the little collection of posts that follow,
(if I can get my technologically-challenged brain to make it work!)

Blessing is an ancient form of well-wishing that does not belong exclusively to any one religion, although Christianity has always been big on it as a concept. One of my favourite writers is John O'Donohue, poet, scholar, writer and Roman Catholic priest from the Celtic mountains of Connemara in Ireland. Shortly before his untimely death at the age of 52, he wrote of the need "to retrieve the lost art of blessing" in our society and I think he's onto something. Blessing is well-wishing at its best. It expects nothing, asks for nothing in return and offers just itself and lovingkindness for the one blessed.

To which end I thought I would post a series of twelve short posts in the next twelve days with an image or two and a blessing in each, for all of you kind readers, both known and unknown, as a little Christmas gift to you. They will be short and non-specific as far as any expectation of shared beliefs or spirituality is concerned but I hope you will like them. Simple but heart-felt wishes for a very happy Christmastide and 2013.

So on the first day of Christmas ... not a partridge in a pear tree but icing on the cake.

Most of everyday life is like the fruit part of Christmas cake - the routine fabric of our days that sustains us, keeps us going and is full of hidden, good things as well as may be the odd raisin pip. But at Christmas, plain fruit cake wears its extravagant cloak of marzipan and icing - not needed exactly because actually, fruit cake is very good on its own, but just there for the sheer exuberant joy of it. So this first blessing wishes you that sort of joy - sheer, over-the-top-joy for its own sake.

May unmeasured joy fill you, heart and soul, today on Christmas Day and spill over into the days to come. May it surprise you, even when you think Christmas has ended and may you know the contentment and strength that comes from having known such joy, in the coming year.

E x