Looking to the light, I am sure everything will be fine, eventually

Everything is judged here in relation to the Catholic Church. If it annoys them it must be good, writes Gerard Howlin.

TODAY is the shortest day of the year, so the days lengthen from tomorrow. By New Year we will notice. Since last Saturday, for the seven days to Christmas Eve, the great O Antiphons are sung at Vespers across Christendom. This evening, on the darkest day turning to the light is the theme, with O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae which in English means ‘O Morning Star, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness’. And the traditions of the winter solstice are much older. Lucky people have been chosen by lottery to be in Newgrange, to witness the rising sun. The turning to the light is age old. Nothing is forever. Seasons change. Or at least they used to. An outcrop of global warming is a bullishly blooming geranium in my back garden. There is something louchely inappropriate about it. But I like it because it is gaudy.

Central heating, electric light, air conditioning and global warming, which of course is propelled by the aforementioned, has blunted our sense of season, even of rhythm within the day, or week. One of the memorable pieces I read this year was by Adam Thomson the Paris correspondent of the Financial Times. He liked Paris, but the observation which struck, is how closed and quiet he found it on Sundays. A friend was lucky to spend August in Paris. It was a city on vacation. Small businesses, even the municipal swimming pool around the corner, closed. Some cities do sleep, or at least snooze.