19 days to Boxing Day

Our first Christmas themed outing last night to a Choir and Brass Band charity concert. The dark evening and Christmas Lights made the city look both contemporary and historic in the same moment.

Somehow Christmas always seems to open a portal into the past in a way that other celebrations don’t.

Our journey was very much 2024. The local shopping Mall was alight with shop lights and Christmas decorations, but all entrances were cordoned off and there were police cars and fire engines with flashing blue lights. In the moment the area looked like a film set. The shopping Mall was also our destination of choice for parking so some quick thinking was needed.  A small backstreet carpark was found and that inconsequential change of plan flipped us back through the centuries in an instant. Instead of walking to the venue on 21st century paving we had to use an old back lane.

And that was the inspiration a couple of years ago for the charcoal sketch of Dublin.

A man takes a pee in a back street. Illuminated by the lights emerging from a pub. It could be an image from anytime in history except the second figure, a cook on his break, is illuminated by his mobile phone.

What is it about Christmas that makes the portal between now and the past just a little easier to see?

And so on to 26 days to Boxing Day with H for History.

Sometimes it is barely hidden.