the wind will never change

The first thing that happens is that Gawain cuts someone's head off. You know who it is, and you know why.
What you don't know is that his blood was red, red like berries, and it spurted from his neck and splattered onto the ground and the dried apples laid in their platters and the dead pig on hers and the white linen of Gawain's tunic. That's why this is a Christmas story: because the knight's blood was red, but his eyes were green, and his clothes were green, and his skin was green, too, and because he had tracked snow into the hall, and because even after he put his head back on and got on his horse and left - even after they couldn't hear his hoofbeats, out on the stone path the Romans had built - the snow stayed, and stayed.