The magic of the season, and how do we find it?

It’s the last month of the year, and for many cultures and faiths it marks a time of preparation leading up to the holidays. It also evokes a lot of memories, dreams and feelings too, so let’s talk a little about the magic of the season.

Memories, dreams and feelings

I don’t know about you, but I find myself thinking back to past holiday seasons, especially those as a child. The overriding feelings and memories is a sense that so much was possible.

Without adult responsibilities, there was a freer sense of curiosity, wonder and magic. I think as adults it’s something we try to recapture for ourselves. It’s a way of going back to that innocence of the inner child.

Thinking about the characters in the Word Guardians stories, for Yas it relates to her sense of curiosity and wonder when falling into her first realm in The Battle for the Peacekeepers. So here’s an excerpt of her realising she’s somewhere magical. (To set the scene, feel free to re-read the excerpt in When Yas discovers magic).

When Yas first fell into a realm

After landing on the forest floor, mentally she checked through her body for any signs of pain. There were none. A forest scene came into focus around her. Looking up, she saw the branches of a tree between her and a blue, partly cloudy, sky. A huge trunk was at the top of her vision, behind her. It seemed so tall that she couldn’t tell where the tree ended and the sky began. There were other trees around her, but not as tall or as full of leaves in their canopies. They let in wider shafts of sunlight. Remnants of leaves she had crashed through floated down through the beams of light along with twigs, branches, nuts, and flies that had been disturbed. The tree’s limbs swished and swayed back to their original positions. As the scene stilled around her, she noticed other sounds and smells. In the distance, there was bird song. She could smell a freshness she associated with morning dew, along with damp bark and soil. The whole scene reminded her of a forest she had once visited as a child on a school trip to England. The New Forest, she remembered it being called. And this place looked so neat and tidy, as if it was new.

She chanced movement into a sitting position, incredulous that she was where she was. One minute the shop, now a forest. She figured she must have taken a bump on the head and that the world was going on around her unconscious body. Soon she’d be waking up in a hospital with her worried parents onlooking.

“Wake up,” she commanded herself. “Come on!” She tried hitting herself on the arm. It didn’t work, so she figured that she’d need to deal with wherever she was.

She heard a light rustling nearby. Its lightness suggested a small creature searching through the leaves for food. She moved her head slowly, so that she didn’t frighten it. There was still no pain. That was a good sign. From what she remembered of the view above her, it was probable that she had fallen a very long way indeed and she should have been injured. Looking to her side, she glanced movement. About ten metres away was a small grey squirrel, searching.

“Where did I put it?”

That surprised Yas. A talking squirrel. It immediately triggered thoughts that challenged her perception of reality. What was she was experiencing right now? She was clearly concussed, she figured, but what state was she in physically back at the shop? Had McVale arrived back yet from her chores? Maybe she had tried to wake her up and failed? That was a worrying thought. She’d call the paramedics, Yas reasoned. They’ll be picking me up and carting me off to hospital. That’s what would be happening now. This was her mind’s way of keeping her from the shock of serious injury. Then another line of reasoning caught up. Hold on, I only fell from a kick-step. How bad could it be?

Marrying dreams and reality

As for Yas in the above excerpt, the challenge is in allowing dreams not to be closed off in our thinking. It’s all too easy to shutdown what seems to be unlikely or impossible, based on our experience and conditioning of the world around us.

But does that mean that the magic isn’t there?

The message is all around us

The message the magic of the season is all around us. We see it in movies, adverts, books and more. At this time of year, it’s pretty much everywhere and impossible to avoid.

So, if it’s there, why don’t we see it? Often, we’re too busy performing all that we have to do in our daily lives and in preparing for the holidays that we don’t find it.