Twelfth Night, the Last Day of Christmas

Santa Claus is fatherly but old.  Appropriate.  Because Christmas has a family sweetness about it, but it also is fleeting.

Much of the images of Christmas are either cozy and domestic–inside, by the fire, the family gathered around the tree–or aerial, like the song above.  Soaring through the air.  Great open spaces covered in snow under a vast and starlit night.  That is also appropriate.  I have noticed that at moments of great family closeness, everyone else seems a million miles away.