A cardinal on a pinecone nest. Another craft. Once a month the women’s craft guild would meet in the social hall at Rosemont, my father’s church for 18 years. The room smelled of hot glue guns, silk flowers and Spanish moss, and when I was done with my homework I would help my mother construct this month’s object, always warned away from the glue gun’s heat. Hot cardinal, Christmas bird, the festive red in the bleached winter light. A sprig of holly, shed blood next to evergreen, colors that tingle with Sun God birth and Goddess renewal, the Oak King’s triumph over the Holly King, Lord of Light locked with Lord of Dark. Yuletide symbols the Christians so easily hooked onto so that all our seasons are palimpsest. A cardinal is just a cardinal, new world bird of the Americas, named by colonists who saw the male’s crest and thought of a Catholic bishop’s headdress. But to see that streak of red when the Earth has turned from the sun, when all of nature seems to slumber—the bird still brings wonder.
