Month: January 2026
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Norwegian Wood
Among all of the Beatles’ ballads that I listened to in my youth, Norwegian Wood stood out for its romantic tune and peculiar title. I didn’t understand English as well then, but a read of this song’s lyrics is anything but. As the authors had clarified straightaway, it was about an affair gone awry. As…
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The Reindeer
Long before the tales of Santa Claus, images of the flying reindeer had been etched onto the Bronze Age’s stones, scattering across the deserts and steppes of western Mongolia and stretching into the Altai Mountains and up to the border of Manchuria in the east. On these stones depicted the reindeer with its antlers reaching…
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The Snow-Queen
“Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God.”– Matthew 18:3 When I was a child, I knew of Finland as the garden of the Snow-Queen. In Hans Christian Andersen’s story, a little girl named Gerda rode a reindeer, passing Lapland to reach Finland in order to…
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The Birch Tree
At Loschwitz above the cityThe air is sunny and chill;The birch-trees and the pine-treesGrow thick upon the hill. Lone and tall, with silver stem,A birch-tree stands apart;The passionate wind of spring-timeStirs in its leafy heart. I lean against the birch-tree,My arms around it twine;It pulses, and leaps, and quivers,Like a human heart to mine. One…
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The Juniper Tree
I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coatsWith scarves of red tied ’round their throatsTo keep their little heads from falling in the snowAnd I turned ’round and there you goAnd Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow redAs strawberries in the summertime.– Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal Since it was…
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