Frosty Wind Made Moan

On the first full day of winter, a confection of snow covered the verge of ice reaching toward the river center. 

I love the carol, In the Bleak Midwinter, with its bittersweet tune and words, catching the mystery, the sweetness and the gravity of the birth of Christ, as Christians understand it, or, at least, as I understand it.

As the story is told in the Gospel of Luke, Mary and Joseph travel south from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That journey probably followed the Jordan River much of their way.  The Jordan, though five times longer than the Ottauquechee, is not much wider, as the old postcard image below shows.

 

The carol creates a picture requiring higher latitudes than Joseph and Mary would ever have traversed, but, of course, "the bleak midwinter" is not really about the weather.  Cold winds blow in many forms, and still do.