White Christmas in Progress (Sunset, Saturday, 25 December 2010)

William Van Doren, WHITE CHRISTMAS IN PROGRESS (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Tinseltime (Sunset, Friday, 24 December 2010)

William Van Doren, TINSELTIME (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Sunset, Christmas Day, 25 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Painted at Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Steady rain, rising temperatures, and fog rising from the snow at sunset.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol:

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing and taught Scrooge his precepts.

Sunset, Thursday, 24 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Painted at Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

On the way, finally, to cut a tree – way way too big for any normal living room, as I’m sure you would have observed in an instant –

(we are now improvising alternative arrangements for decorating our living room) – anyway, on this arduous one-mile fool’s errand (my fool’s errands are always arduous, it seems to be my style) – I took a break.

(The tree was found in a field doomed to be cleared and developed, a situation for another time, perhaps.)

I fell straight back in the snow, to look up at what seemed an endless polar blue. (A blue that paled considerably by sunset.) The considerable strains of our snowstorm-blocked preparations eased. What I saw was a fantastic blue that kept changing depths, behind the clean, slightly shaggy yet almost polished-looking pale brown top branches of big white oaks. For that moment, sky and trees were a Christmas card I gave myself.