Once the clock strikes twelve

- December 04, 2020

We've all felt something just beyond our reach, something we almost saw, an impression that seemed to come from nowhere. Is someone there? Hello? And, isn't it interesting how much more intense that gets when the sun has set and we are alone! We are alone, aren't we???

The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary identifies midnight as the time when witches are supposedly active. This is popularly known as the witching hour! Supposedly, this is when the veil between the worlds is the thinnest, when the bleedthroughs are common, when spirits can migrate and shadows can be cast. It is the time of magic!

On the calendar, it is the death of one day, the birth of a new one. Sometimes the opposite of the birth of magic, it can be the loss just as well, the coach reverting to a pumpkin, the horses to mice. Fortunately, some things like glass slippers seem to survive the transition, although the magic that allows you to dance in them without destroying your feet must surely diminish!

Carol and I celebrate the witching hour every evening/morning by tucking ourselves in the covers and letting the spirits play. We close our eyes and enter a trance, sometimes snoring. Then the magic takes hold and we travel to far lands with stranger companions. We become part of amazing dramas unfolding serendipitously, dreamscapes unfurling multicolored banners and rolling landscapes.

As special as this time is, it can't compare to the magic experienced by the child before we teach them to no longer sit in rapturous wonder, to sober up, get a job, and deal with "facts." Science is great, rationality is great, and religion for some is great. But, honestly, none of them can match the magic and the majesty experienced by a child the night before Christmas!

No small part of the magic is that Santa Claus comes during the night when the child sleeps. He flies a sleigh with reindeer to the roof, magically comes down the chimney and brings gifts to put around the Christmas tree. At night, after midnight. No wonder this is when Santa flies. This is when the fuel for magic is plentiful and cheap, when little imaginations in little heads work like little magic factories. And, like glass slippers, the toys persist even after Saint Nick returns to the North Pole. Oh, the wonder of it!

Then we grow up. Unless you want to count drugs or meditation or religious rapture, where do we as adults recapture this magic most commonly? Shackman knows. It's music!