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On Christmas Eve, as I was excitedly preparing for brunch with friends before a glorious Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in Durham Cathedral, another old friend rang. “Your crate of Christmas wine will arrive today,” he said. And then he told me the real purpose of his call. A mutual friend had just suffered a terrible tragedy. I was stunned with horror. His family’s Christmas will never be the same. While the rest of the world rejoices with families and fun, reunion and celebration, they’ll be thrown into a profound shadow of shocked bereavement. We spent last Christmas longing for news of a missing family member. At a party, mulled wine, mince pies, carols, I burst into tears at a question from a kind hostess. This season of jollity for the many can become a painful reminder of misery for the few. A bin-lorry mowing down shoppers. A plane lost over an ocean. A ferry on fire over a freezing sea. Family after family whose Christmas will never be the same. As a child I hated having my birthday on the second of January. Such a dead time of year, such an anti-climax after the celebrations. It wasn’t until I had children of my own – all carefully born in spring or early summer – that I had my first birthday party. Suddenly this week I realised how much I now enjoy it: holly still up, fires roaring, family at home. That first time I came in from an enforced winter walk to find unexpected guests and champagne turned the tide. Last year my surprise dinner was so delightful that today I couldn’t risk leaving it to chance. This dullest night of the year has become one of laughter and light for me. The Roman god Janus looks both ways, back at the horror and forward to the hope: the god of new beginnings, fresh projects, open doors. However dead the earth, it is hiding life to come. However dark the nights, they are getting lighter every day. In his Christmas broadcast at the threshold of war, George the Sixth quoted the now familiar words by Minnie Louise Haskins: I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” Today, again, I’ll spend my birthday without someone I love dearly and miss acutely. But God has given me another year of my life. And an even more certain hope beyond it: when He will wipe every tear from our eyes; when there will be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain. For, “Behold, I make all things new.” So I went forth, the King continued, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.