Ever heard of a time of year called Twixtmas? Well, we hadn’t either, until yesterday. Twixtmas, we found, refers to the 5 days between Christmas and New Year. It’s being promoted by a non-profit making organisation called the Flexible Thinking Forum and the website is www.twixtmas.com. For each of the 5 days (27 – 31 December) they suggest things to do to help your world, and most of all, to help yourself. The idea is that we use the free time to do simple things we don’t usually have time for.
I read that we could spend more time with friends, help someone, organize something in the community, or do something new. We could go for a walk in the rain, read a book or just recharge our batteries. That has to be more relaxing than braving the sales. Twixtmas is a new word and its inventors want it to be recognized as a very important period of time.
These photos are of the “something new” we’ve been doing: dawn walks. Choose a potentially sunny morning and a large open space, make yourself get out of bed early and set off on your walk by about 7.30 am. You won’t have chance to do this in the summer unless you want to set off at 3.30 am! Our photos were taken on Priest Hill, Epsom.
You can read about our discoveries on December dawn walks in my post about Mysterious Mistletoe.
On 31st December there’ll be the usual New Year celebration fireworks. But are they as spectacular as nature’s free displays at sunrise? The German writer Friedrich Hebbel can be quoted here, from one of his diaries in 1837:
“Das Publikum beklatscht ein Feuerwerk, aber keinen Sonnenaufgang.”
People will applaud a firework, but not a sunrise.
Lovely post, Jane!
Thanks, Rosalind!