Crepuscular Walk on Christmas Eve

My family hasn't been much for the Christmas brouhaha since well before my mum died in 2012. But we unfolded the artificial tree and dressed it in bright fairylights and put a wreath on the door, and I assembled the bones of a crib, whose figures have been in my family for as long as I can remember: a ceramic Joseph and Mary, and plastic Jesus (far too big for his cot-trough) and two wise men (the third went AWOL this year). 

Partly for our son's sake, though he's 16 now and not impressed. But, like me, he appreciates ritual, this sputtering flare we send up to mark the last days of the the year.

Another, more necessary, ritual:  I took the dogs for a walk, on the farm roads of the Kilruddery estate outside Bray. I found this puddle in one of the darker scraps of woodland, about halfway on the 50 minute loop, one of three natural tunnels almost evenly spaced. There was something about it: a shallow integument in the mud, spidered with a woof of branches shuttering the gloomy dusk, but as faithful a mirror as any. Ah, metaphors! Enough.