A good fireworks display requires attention to colour combinations as well as a grasp of timing. These skills are equally important when planning a flowerbed – the key difference being that fireworks explode simultaneously. The Japanese call fireworks “hanabi”, which means flower fire. In the winter, when I can no longer find vibrant colour in my flowerbeds on the ground I try to make a giant flowerbed of the sky!

On 5 November we celebrate my daughter’s conveniently placed birthday rather than The Other Matter. As a patriot and a Roman Catholic, the absence of a legitimate excuse to cheer and shriek might leave me as solitary as a sandpiper. But we do not restrict ourselves to one evening of pyrotechnics. I like to turn to the firework cupboard to mark birthdays or the arrival of friends. I have an odd premonition that, as with the ravens at the Tower of London, if I were ever to find the firework cupboard completely bare, the kingdom would fall.

The process of lighting a fuse to throw noisy colour high above my head is more than just good fun; it is a way of standing defiant against the bleakest moments of midwinter. As the banging and whistling reverberate around the valley, I know deep inside that the hurly-burly of high summer will surely come again. 

It is at this time of year – when the trees stand stark against the skyline and frost hardens the ground underfoot – that the evergreens we have planted in this garden really come into their own. Thanks to them, the garden now stands strongly against the withering backdrop of an East Anglian winter, providing intimacy and shelter regardless of the season.

We have planted box but also yew, laurel, privet, holly, bay, olive, mahonia, and many others besides, (even leyland cypress – a plant I particularly like). Each of them has its own particular way of giving to a winter garden. The metallic green of a holly leaf is as beguiling as a leyland cyprus is useful when you need a quick barrier to a northern wind. The cypress smells delicious too, even at this time of year.

Many of these evergreens provide a handsome display of bright berries. Pyracantha (firethorn) is, as the name suggests, an appropriate choice for a firework enthusiast. It will, in the right conditions, provide a veritable cascade of bright berries, though it should only be handled by those who own sturdy gloves. The Callicarpa (beautyberry bush) provides a wonderful eye-catching distraction on a Christmas walk around the garden. I highly recommend it to berry lovers.

Of the seven of us in our family, four have winter birthdays. All of the five dogs have birthdays that fall in the winter months. Thankfully, the two cats were born in the autumn and Buddy, our stick insect, has a birthday unknown. But even with these helpful exceptions (my birthday is in June), that makes nine wither birthdays which feels like a treadmill of exhausting celebrations whose main attraction, from my perspective, is that they provide an excuse for fireworks. 

My son’s birthday is on 15 December. People sometimes sigh and nod knowingly at him when they hear this, as if they pity him the misfortune of a December birthday. However,  he is fond of his mid-winter celebrations. I suspect in some subtle and rather charming way he feels that having a birthday at least proximate to the most important birthday in history must only be a good thing.

Towards the end of this month we move into a time of preparation. A time when we anticipate the coming of all that is good, all that is true and and all that can truly be called beautiful, or perhaps even real. Can anything be described as truly real other than an eternal God? Is everything else real only in so much as it is related to Him? Is this one thread of His great rescue mission to us, the offer to be truly real? As the sun makes meaner and meaner little arcs in the southern sky, and as we arrive at the point where the days are trimmed to their very maximum, we choose not to see darkness but instead the arrival of Light.

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