Well, here we are again, November, the time of autumn mists and mellow fruitfulness.

This is a time when we are very aware of time, light, and encroaching darkness.

We are increasingly enshrouded by this darkness, en route towards December 21, the shortest day and officially the beginning of winter.

But this day also marks the gradual journey to spring and rebirth.

Not surprising then that culturally there is such a focus on this transformation.

Death but then renewal, hope sustained.

No wonder then of the significance of Christmas at this time.

Birth, or rebirth depending on your theology, celebration, and presents.

But, yet again this festival has been colonised by consumer capitalism, no exception to the dominant fact in our everyday lives that most human activity is a money-making opportunity.

I am always surprised that more Christians are not angry about the inexorable slide into this expensive sentimentalism.

So, how do we cope with these seasonal changes?

In older times a good deal was made of the four humours as distinctive characteristics of our personality, and therefore a guide to our disposition, motives, and behaviour.

The humours were sanguine: pleasure-seeking and sociable, happy.

Choleric: ambitious and leader-like.

Phlegmatic: relaxed and thoughtful and melancholic: analytical and literal, and I suppose the one most often associated with feelings about the fading light and coldness of autumn.

The ancients, who were also very focused on astrology, saw guidance and common sense in this.

In our own time melancholy has often been associated with glumness, and SAD of course.

To a great extent, we can blame the early nineteenth-century German Romantic Movement for much of this, all that Storm and Stress!

There are endless metaphors for our mental and physical condition at this time, and access to abstract arts like music can feed these feelings.

So, is this a good time to have a budget?

Hope is in short supply at the moment, and the reality for most of the poorer members of society is that this budget will do little for their precarious lives on the margins.

Of course, most people will welcome the additional spending on the NHS and education, well essentially schooling.

But, and it's a big but, precious little help with low incomes as set against the ever-rising cost of living, or access to decent housing at affordable rents, or everyone benefiting from much more money for local government care and services.

Greater fairness for all, as a key measure of people’s sense of improvement, has also taken a knock due to the rich not being required to contribute more to the pot.

Too many vested interests for the Government to protect?

In a society dominated by money very many people do not have sufficient to buy the ‘welfare’ they are deprived of due to a lack of public money.

The budget contained several promises for a change to this situation, jam tomorrow.

But, the reality is that most governments in recent times have ignored and/or feel unable to address the real costs of a global economy that marginalises poorer people across the world, the UK is no exception.

So, given all these issues that confront us, individually and collectively, what of our resilience?

Where would we place ourselves on the ‘humours’ list?

We probably all have a mixture of temperaments, but what of the balance between them, especially so for the necessary seasonal adjustments?

The third part of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall story about Thomas Cromwell's The Mirror and the Light is about to be shown on TV.

Is this a suitable metaphor for our current malaise?

We are losing the light, and need much more, soon.

And the mirror, perhaps a looking back to our traditional strengths of production to meet social needs.