A bracing, surprising simile for presenting something as a picture of health and wholesomeness.  Here it is about reading material, but it could apply to anything else. 

Our Boys appeared regularly, a cultural antidote with official home backing, healthy as a Christian Brother on a winter morning, the first step towards Ireland’s Own. 

In these pandemic times, may you radiate such resounding health, especially on winter mornings.  

For a rich selection of other Heaney similes and metaphors, see our celebration of Beowulf, both his version and that of Kevin Crossley-Holland.

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 8

Photo credits: susannp4 and xusenru at pixabay