Time is like a forest fire, consuming everything in its path. Our most intense moments burn bright and hot, leaving nothing but fragile tatters of memory. Where would we be without art, snatching moments before they disintegrate into oblivion? What else but art, crucible for smelting the ore of our lives till we get a lodestone, with power to excite other souls, in other moments? How else can time be defied? This is the prodigious, mythical, Promethean feat which propels us animals to create gods, and be punished by them for such effrontery. This is what makes us human, and comes with its price. I wrote the other day of the medieval peasants’ Christmas. The mythic power of Bible stories, even to those who could not read, illumined the darkest days of the Winter Solstice, the time known as Yule, whose druidical lore never quite died. A carol, “The Holly and the Ivy”, attempts a synthesis with Christianity, in these words: The holly bears a berry As red as any blood And Mary bore sw...