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CELEBRATE THE SEASON:
 Solemn Stillness
by Wayne Kelley
Winter Outings
By Snowmobile or Sleigh
A Christmas Tree Shoppers Glossary of Terms
by Walt Rockwood
Vermont's Top 10 Winter Events
IN THE FARMHOUSE KITCHEN:
Holiday Cookie Collection
EVERYTHING WOOD HEAT:
More Woodstove Magic
by Daryle Thomas
GARDENING:
Forcing Bulbs for Winter Bloom
by Leonard Perry
Winter Gardening Tips
by Vern Grubinger
INTO THE OUTDOORS:
Unfinished Stories in the Snow
by Jenna Guarino
Tracking Winter Wildlife
by Heather Behrens
Did You Ever Eat a Pine Tree?
by Euell Gibbons
The River in Winter
by W.D. Wetherell
VERMONT WEATHERVANE BOOK NEWS:
My Dog's Brain
plus the story behind the creation of the book
Will Moses' Silent Night
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Statewide Calendar of Events
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Solemn Stillness
by Wayne Kelley
The silence of the new fallen snow. The wordless eloquence of a night filled with stars. The hushed reverence of a host of adoring admirers gathered about a baby cradled in a manger of hay. Images of Christmas. Voiceless vignettes of a season that's become all too accustomed to uncommon noise.
Carols blaring from every stereo system, the jangling bells of street-corner Santas, a million twinkling, blinding lights flooding the world with glare, and of course, the endless chatter of cash registers everywhere you turn. This is the Christmas we know. And I suppose it must be so. Wherever gifts are exchanged, there is usually cash transferred, and so the registers keep spitting out their endless miles of tape and mercantiles across the land jingle their way to the bank. At least they pray they will this busiest retail season of the year. Other months may be lean.
And we do like to throw a party. Christmas is after all a celebration. But are we any closer to the faith of our fathers or have we shored up our foundations any more as a nation under God with all our noise? What if it were different? What if, just for a change, we chose to set aside this Christmas to be quiet? Unplug all the Christmas trees. Turn off all the music. Pack up all the presents and put them in the closet, and bundle all the relatives off to home.
Not a popular idea, I grant you, but is it possible we might be missing an intimate, more profound encounter with Christmas that we are not experiencing with all our hoopla and hoorah? Like reading between the lines of a book, it is most often within the silences that lie between where life's greatest discoveries and most elusive secrets are to be found. Yuletide quiescence. Peace on earth. A state of the human soul we are not used to.
Instead, we could find a little chapel with no choir and only candles glowing in the darkness, and there we could sit and not say a thing, raise no note of traditional song, utter no whisper in prayer, Simply sit, be still and know that He is God. We could, if we chose, remove our shoes, for in that moment all the earth would be a hallowed ground.
It is not to be so. We will again this year observe the holiday as we always have . We are such creatures of habit. Still, one cannot help but wonder, if we might not hear echoes of infinite wisdom, and draw a little closer to the manger, if we shut it all off just once. Perhaps with everything quiet the still, small voice of God could be heard.
If we should launch in silence our quest for the holy grail of good will among all peoples, then maybe the solemn stillness in which the world would lay, would give us ears with which to hear angelic harps of gold.
Wayne Kelley of East Dorset, Vt. is a regular contributor to our journal.
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