MUCKING UP CHRISTMAS

A little while ago my wife was selected to sing that unaccompanied first verse of “Once in Royal David’s City”. The church was in darkness and a long silence descended before her voice rang out clear, confident and thrilling. An hour before she’d stared at me as I wished her good luck and she said:-

“If I f*** this up it’ll ruin everyone’s Christmas.”

I thought she was being a little melodramatic. as if.

“Congregation claim Christmas ruined as soloist sings flat.  ‘My children cried’ grumbles mother of ten.”

But unless things really matter they wouldn’t be worth doing.

The General Election hasn’t ruined Christmas but perhaps it’s dampened it a little.

“You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I’m telling you why
Our party leaders are coming to town.”

Strange they’re called “Party” leaders –the least festive bunch ever – no party, just gloom and repetition –get this blog done, no shilly-shallying. Blog done and then some fun.

In over half a century of studying elections I’m struck by the scale of venom now that each of the leaders are attracting and the collapse of tribal loyalties. Boris is seducing died-in-the- wool labour voters. Jeremy is winning over Waitrose shoppers with his “nice” manifesto.

As someone noted about the perils of a Christmas election it’s impossible to prophesy who the new Messiah will be, or indeed if he’ll turn up at all, because so many voters voting after work will be pickled and uncertain of their own name let alone their voting preference. However it was reassuring to hear that some returning officers take a favourable view of a drawn penis being a legitimate indication of voting intention provided it was in the confines of a candidate’s box. 

Meanwhile the sound of carols, the hordes of shoppers and Amazon deliveries and the mystery of Christmas create that sense of excitement we felt as children seeping into our consciousness despite our protestations of cynicism and a feigned grumpiness.

Paperchains, balloons, tinsel and tangerines. That’s what I remember most. Plus one other thing. My father – a serious, Scottish banker who most resembled Frazer in Dad’s Army on a day to day basis – transformed into an astonishingly funny stand-up comedian – a Billy Connolly for just a few days a year. Liqueurs like Green Chartreuse and Cointreau appeared and swiftly disappeared down family throats. We became the Music Halls, singing raucously and having fun.

I was in Oxford Street last week and popped into Selfridges. It brought back the awe I used to feel at Christmas. Such plenty, such  luxury, such colour, such good humour, such wonderful smells of Armagnac, perfume, mincemeat, chocolate and freshly ground coffee. It’s Christmas cornucopia, that once a year calorie excess that entrances me.

So you can’t muck up Christmas. Its remorseless good cheer, misted windows, laughter and kissing under the mistletoe (perhaps not now; the mistletoe-too- movement?) are addictive.

No you can’t muck up magic even if you’re party leader.

ANOTHER CHRSTMAS CAROL

Christmas is remorselessly creeping up on us like an expensively dressed mugger. There’s plenty of conspicuous consumption going on. The amount of sugar in the stollen, panettone and mince pies that I’ve casually scoffed over the past week would have made the government spokespeople on obesity writhe in horror.  (Have you noticed the way people say “All good….anyway it’s Christmas” as they dive into a Yule-Hyper-Calorie-Log.) And I haven’t been too clever on the alcohol front either. A weekly unit or whatever abstemiousness (given half a chance) they’d mandate is beyond my weakening will.

But it’s the music at Christmas that makes my skin tingle. So of full of joy and great lyrics.  I want to shout aloud:

“Let the organ thunder
While the choir with peals of glee
Doth rend the air asunder”
(Unto Us a Boy is born – Mediaeval possibly 12th Century)

Isn’t a peal of glee just wonderful?  Not enough glee around, not nearly enough. I’m told I have a loud voice so I’m rather more familiar with rending the air asunder.
Christmas is, if nothing else, cheerful and a relaxing time when we should heed these words

“Let nothing you dismay”
( God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – 16th century)

After the past few weeks of the dismaying Brexit debate that’s a tough call. But maybe the spirit contained in it can be taken to heart. They can sing it in the Commons in 2019. When they aren’t snoozing of course.

In the aftermath of Christmas we can address the curse of today. Bigger even than Brexit. Yes it’s insomnia. 36% of the population have it and another third don’t sleep too well or nearly long enough. Every time I hear “O Little Town of Bethlehem” these four words resonate:-

“a deep and dreamless sleep” 
(Philip Brooks 1868)

The idea of hibernating after Christmas, healing my battered brain by cuddling my wife (and Orpheus) and hiding from the bleak midwinter that they say is coming soon makes me feel wonderful.

After the parties, the feasting, the drinking of Armagnac, Green Chartreuse and Tequila (only at Christmas does anyone drink stuff like that) we have opportunity to replenish our  souls and reboot our minds. Rest is a good thing and we don’t do enough. The real curse of today’s world is unproductive rushing around and nagging anxiety about almost everything. Take the advice of that wonderful, too seldom performed carol, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree:

“I’m weary with my former toil
Here will I sit and rest awhile”
(Richard Hutchins? – 1761)

The resting starts on Wednesday; before that we can afford to let our hair down, tell silly jokes, pull crackers, drink mulled wine and try to be as nice a person as we always should be. Because if it doesn’t work its magic what can? A very happy Christmas.

“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither….”
(Good King Wenceslas – John Mason Neale 1853 based on 10th century Bohemian story)

WHY I STILL BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS

“Bah! Humbug! Don’t be daft…you can’t.” But I do… I completely believe in the idea of Santa Claus…of sleigh bells…of “Ho! Ho! Ho’s!” and of Rudolf. Like all great, timeless stories it has evolved and gathered a patina of stuff like the elves, North Pole, chimneys and that red Santa costume. I really believe in the spirit of Christmas that this projects.

And that’s why I abhor the idea of telling children at a certain age that it isn’t true, that the whole idea is a piece of childish garbage. A friend told me that when his mother told him aged 10 “the truth” he told her insouciantly “yeah I knew that.” But he didn’t and just went away sobbing because an idea had been broken and a trust destroyed.

Imagine the guffaws of laughter provoked by the Rubens painting of St. Francis at Christ’s crucifixion. …spoiler alert …Francis wasn’t born for another 1200 years so the whole thing is a lie. Ho. Ho. Ho.

In a year which heralded the arrival of post-truth my support for the idea not the literal truth being what matters may seem dangerously avant-garde.  But Christmas like love is not something we can just reduce to facts.

Fact or fiction? Whenever we read a totally engaging story we lose ourselves in the truth of that story. A Christmas Carol, Pickwick Papers are both in the bubble in which we read them, totally credible. The skilful storyteller can induce what Samuel Taylor Coleridge 200 years ago called a “suspension of disbelief”.
In the car recently the Archers came on the radio and our grandsons listened…there was a long silence. When it finished I heard that carefully phrased question: “Grandpa are those real people and why do they talk like that?”  The Archers and those funny “old people” - step up Joe Grundy - have become a new truth which they and other soap opera stars are for many people. Just  as the Shire has its own reality in Lord of the Rings.

Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe the incredible can happen? You’d better after 2016. But miracles need a little help. Like great magic the more we’re predisposed to accept the implausible the more wonderful the trick becomes.

Sadly as we grow up and become more rational and hardened against play we lose a little of our humanity. We become cynical about the stories that can make the world so beautiful a place.

I believe in goodness, in human beings, in generosity of spirit and in Christmas not as a factual thing but as a completely brilliant idea and story. A story that is timeless and which bonds us together. And what better way to start a story could there be than this?

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.” 

GOD BLESS US, EVERYONE

As another Christmas creaks into sight it strikes me as strange how little it changes. As I watched ‘A Christmas Carol’ on TV with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge (“beam me up Santa”) Victorian Christmas was depicted with all those same familiar urges I felt when I was small and Britain was poor – the smell of tangerines, of hot mincemeat, the sound of laughter and of singing carols like In Dulci Jubilo in which, momentarily, we all rather self-consciously utter Latin.

Those same familiar urges come back every year. Mulled wine urges. Roast potato urges. Calvados and port urges. Cracker urges…
Q. Why does Santa have three gardens?
A.  So he can ho, ho, ho.
Q. What sort of bike does Santa ride?
A. A Holly Davidson.

Nostalgia, as they say, isn’t what it used to be, except when it comes to Christmas.

Because we now live in radically changed times where life is played to new rules.  Things we no longer do or frown upon generally vary from capital punishment to fox hunting to smoking to applauding having stiff upper lips. And not so long ago many of those were normal.

We were taught to be masters and mistresses of fair play. Tribal loyalty outlawed whistleblowing. We didn’t “sneak”, complain or talk about “it” – which makes the emerging horrors of Caldecott School (gateway to Eton), a poignant example of the scale of change not least in the police’s willingness to become historians as well as custodians of the law. (It also raises a question as to the powers of observation of the seemingly intelligent Mr Clegg, a Joint Head Boy there, who was apparently completely unaware of what was going on.)

There is no such thing as “water under the bridge” any more… stones are no longer best left unturned.

Years ago I was talking to a senior academic about the huge sums paid to the college by a benefactor who was subsequently discovered to be a crook and suggesting we ought (perhaps) to return the money to his victims.

He sighed:  “My dear Richard. If we gave money back that rascals had given us over the centuries we wouldn’t exist or we’d be bankrupt. Don’t be silly”.

That was then. I’m not so sure now.

Because in today’s world the rules have changed.

The rules relate to doing whatever you can get away with to win and whatever looks good. The Charles Saatchi alleged media campaign to “whiten” the name of Nigella would be a classic example of playing a new game of media sledging.

But Nigella’s a lot prettier than Charles (I supposed I’m being un-PC saying that) and like Christmas she’s big, fun and seems just a bit naughty. I haven’t heard her sing but I bet she’s tuneful…. Eartha Kitt meets Carly Simon.

Like Christmas, icons like Nigella are timeless.

And regardless of whatever allegations, is a whole lot more inspiring than the British preparatory school system.