fog swallows the deer

fog swallows the deer,

wrapping all forms in a swaddling 

of soft white light

On Advent Sunday "the fog comes on little cat feet," as Carl Sandburg says, rising from the moist ground and cloaking the trees in ghostly light. Our cats go out in the morning and quickly vanish into the obscuring gloom, which hangs around all day.
          Advent season for Christians in the West is a time of preparation before celebrating the "coming" of Jesus on December 25. However, most historians agree that this date is not the actual date of the birth of Jesus, based on two factors, one astronomical and one political. The Star of Bethlehem that hovered over the city may have been a comet that appeared between March 9 and April 6, 5 BC. And the census that brought Mary and Joseph to his hometown occurred before the death of Herod the Great, which was in 4 BC. So it seems from historical evidence that Jesus was born around the time of the Spring Equinox, during the Jewish Passover, rather than around the time of the Winter Solstice.
          So how did Christmas come to be celebrated on December 25? Roman pagans celebrated the festival of Saturnalia, a time of lawlessness, between December 17-25. During the 4th century CE, Christian leaders hoped to metamorphose pagan holidays into Christian ones. They succeeded in converting pagans by promising that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia festival as Christians. So the Christian leaders named the last day of Saturnalia, December 25, to be the birthday of Jesus.
          The beginning of December also marks the start of hunting season in Iowa. This morning I startle a young buck and his train of six does. They leap into the trees, white tails flashing like exclamation points, and are quickly swallowed up by the fog. The deer seem to know that this area is a No Hunting zone, so they congregate in our meadows and woods. Today, on this first day of Advent, they are aided by the dense fog, which wraps all forms in a swaddling of soft white light.