The Twelve Crimes of Christmas
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Throughout the North Temperate zone (in which western civilization arose and matured), there is always a reminder in the sky that things will not last.
All through the summer and fall, when the world is smiling and green things are growing and harvests are collected and stored, the Sun marks out a path in the sky that each day is lower toward the southern horizon than on the day before. The lower the sun is, the less intense is its warmth and the shorter the days get, so that the less-intense warmth has ever less time to do its job.
This is a sobering reminder in the very midst of prosperity that winter is coming, a time of dreary cold and of the apparent death of the plant world.
Yet the decline of the Sun slows and finally there comes a time when the Sun halts its southward drop altogether and then begins to mark out a higher and higher path each day than the day before. The weather continues cold for months after the Sun starts its rise, but that rise is a portent and a promise in the midst of decay that the winter will not last forever and that spring is coming, and with it a renewal of warmth and life and happiness.