Christmas Eve in the forest

Zhang Jin

If Christmas is a sacred spiritual cake, then Christmas Eve is the fragrant cream on top.

True Christians know how to pray and enjoy the warmth and sweetness of it. Profit-making merchants also know how to make this foreign festival change into a turkey that lays eggs quickly, and incubates money for their pockets to hatch exponentially.

It is those of us who are neither Christians nor merchants, who are embarrassed. On Christmas Eve last year, I was not only stranded at a literary conference, but also on a suburb far from the city, and it was not very convenient to go anywhere at night. Santa Claus's gift to me is a time that seems to be expected but very boring, plus this seemingly boring but very interesting space outside the city.

Those who are keen on the battle of Fangcheng have long made an appointment with each other to "safely" put themselves on the mahjong table, planning to boil a pot of small ruyi on the light. Drinkers and pleasure drinkers dip themselves in beer brines and drink themselves slowly to wish each other a Merry Christmas. The remaining dozen or so of us didn't know what to do. Finally, I proposed to go to the forest park next to the "essay essay" - since this is the annual prose meeting, everyone simply strolls around, freely talks, scatters into words, gathers into articles, and tomorrow's conference will be spoken, and tonight's conference can kick off.

In the forest park in winter, there are few tourists, and the forest at night is more lonely, quiet and mysterious. Not only is there no one, but there is no moon, no stars, and the sky wants snow before snow. But there are fierce cold winds, swirling leaves, thin skylight, and vague dreams of birds. From time to time, a few car horns are faintly heard, reminding people that this is still a national park within the system, rather than some kind of mountain forest.

The stone path is curved and curved, leaving very little white and leaving a lot of black. White is pale white, black is inky black. Each of us can feel the attentive touch of the road under our feet, it is clean and refreshing, but people need to be extra careful in their movements. Although Christmas Eve walked hand in hand with us into the forest, the peace of the night road was created by ourselves. It's like singing a hymn, the melody is very beautiful, but you have to make sure you don't get out of tune.

The air is as fresh as colostrum washed, moist, with a bit of winter's unique woody and grass aromas, and a little bit of desolation. Tall pines and fir trees, dense cypresses and quercus, although wooden, can all be Christmas trees. The gifts we receive are not colorful candies, but solemn contemplation of the night, the incessant whispers of the wind. Contemplative and focused like a dream, and the language is low-key as a complaint. Echoing this dream, this whisper, some people mentioned the story of the birth of Jesus, and some people mentioned the Zen, Zhuang and immortal dreams in traditional Chinese culture. I really wanted to meet a fox fairy, a tree spirit or something, but I didn't encounter anything, not even a firefly, after all, it was a harsh winter, and "Liaozhai" was also closed.

Ascending high and looking into the distance, there are several places where there are dim or bright lights flickering. Floating light illuminated a corner of the sky, and some of the treetops were painted red and yellow, and mixed with white. The mountains are fluffy and soft like cakes, and some of the soaring trees are like a thousand beautiful Christmas candles.

Remembering Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, the little Russian girl entered the dream and found that all kinds of Christmas ornaments had come to life. I am also reminded of Charles Dickens's "Stingy Fortune", the Christmas elves of Christmas Eve in English-speaking countries, who frequently ring the bells of my memory. I also think of Hans Christian Andersen's "little girl who sells matches", she saw her long-lost relatives in the fantasy flames of matches, but with her weak life that was frozen, she poked a hole in the glorious and warm Christmas Eve.

Of course, what is more worrying is the city in front of you, and the young people in the city who like to spend foreign festivals, then they have their own relatives and friends. At this moment, they must be busy in the colorful shops or the brightly lit streets, without stinginess, exerting passion and yearning, to find and create all kinds of liveliness, carnival and happiness...

At Christmas, I will give a special speech on the prose style at the conference. I have always thought that prose is a kind of style that can be casual but not without embarrassment, and it has not obtained a household registration book with distinct literary characteristics like novels and poems—just like some foreign festivals for many of us chinese, nor has it acquired a familiar cultural identity such as qingming, dragon boat festival, and Mid-Autumn Festival. But there are many, many participants in both things, although many people do not understand the connotations.

In this way, writing prose is like christmas, and celebrating Christmas is like writing prose. People take what they need at a certain level, and they want freedom, arbitrariness and adaptability.

Then there was a wisp of silent prayer, and the darkness hovered in my heart:

Good night, Christmas Eve in the forest.

Hello, prose Christmas.