House at the Top of the Hill. Little House on the Prairie. This house seems to have come out of a story. It is full of shapes: the triangle and square of the house itself, a parallelogram down below, which could also be a kite, the dissected square (that is, two triangles) next to the house. And full of faces: faces peeking out, looking on in surprise, basking in the rays. We do not actually see the sun, but we get a sense of its rays shining down (for who can say which comes first, the sun or its light?). This house that peeks out at us, making additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions, versions of the line, or the construction of a cross, which is only toppled when we multiply.

Meanwhile, in language, “saint” is very close to “sent”. A saint is sent to us at the right time, to provide guidance, assistance, succour. A “saint” is a human who has purified himself of what he contains, namely “sin”. By working on himself, by applying to God, he has removed the “stain”. A “saint” is a step in the progression from A to I to O away from “Satan”. Here the ego has worked for the good (well, for God, actually). If we rearrange the letters of “Satan”, we find “Santa”, originally based on the figure of St Nicholas, who would go around at night, distributing aid, but now perhaps yoked in to highlight the commercial nature of Christmas and to dissociate it from what it really is – a celebration of the Incarnation of the Word of God, who became human that we might go in the opposite direction, that is, become saints.