Calling All Angels

Look out, here come Christmas and New Year yet again... We're taking our usual evasive action, moving between various locations and keeping a low profile. Blog-wise, I don't intend to be posting anything further until 2024 breaks upon us, but you never know. I'm easily bored these days, and just sitting around doing nothing much makes me restless and prone to dangerous behaviours, such as eating and drinking too much, as well as, you know, brooding about the sort of stuff that tends to end up in a blog post. I can even end up taking photographs of empty whisky bottles and the jug on the kitchen windowsill.

If you're taking an end-of-year break yourself, then do have a good one, but spare a thought for those who aren't or can't, and in particular for the wretched of the earth, of whom there have been far too many this year. If you don't do so already, and you are fortunate enough to be healthy, safe from harm, and reasonably well off (I somehow doubt many readers of this blog would describe themselves as wealthy), maybe this would be a good year to divert some of your seasonal generosity from a pointless potlatch exchange between friends and family into some form of charitable giving, whether in the shape of imaginary Oxfam goats, or direct donation to those doing essential work in tough and dangerous places. I'd also propose, in the words of the old rhyme, that we all put a penny in the old man's hat, but the only problem with that suggestion is that so few of the homeless or destitute have equipped themselves to deal with an increasingly cashless society. "Got any change?" "Um, no, sorry, in all honesty, I don't... Can you take Visa?" So, given the general absence of bank branches these days, you may need to find a cashpoint and draw out a few crisp notes to distribute. Although it's true that those who disapprove of the sort of Christmas treat their cash might be used for prefer to hand out actual food or a hot drink. But, listen, don't put food or pour drink into the hat, OK?

If my experience is anything to go by, it seems that the older you get (and the arithmetic, if not the inner sense of self, says I'll be 70 early in the new year) the more this time of year becomes an occasion for nostalgia [1]. As it happens, the "holidays" I recall with the most acute sense of longing are not those of my childhood but my mid-adolescent years, those times of self-discovery, good friends, and (in my case, anyway) the free-range liberties allowed by parents distracted by visits from and to delightful young grandchildren (my sister is eight years older than me). Happy days, enjoyed to the full in the incontestable Best Half-Decade Ever, 1967-71!

But it is nonetheless true that the Christmases of childhood, which now seem to me to have taken place on another planet far away, will always have a particularly strong gravitational pull on our lapsed sense of trust and wonder, and this poem, written as the First World War was getting into its grisly stride, captures that feeling better than any other I know:

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy (published in The Times on Christmas Eve 1915)

In signing off for the year, I'd love to be able to write something to match Robert Frost's "Christmas circular" poem, also originally from 1915, called Christmas Trees. Read it, and imagine finding it dropped onto your own doormat alongside the utility bills, takeaway flyers, and Christmas cards... Wow, thanks, Bob! But I don't know how to do that, so I'll simply offer you my best wishes for 2024. Which mainly comprise a wish for a rather greater distribution of peace on earth and good will towards all men, which really would be tidings of great joy, wouldn't it?

However, the angels seem to have given up on us – I haven't seen one for ages – so we may be on our own with that. And, sadly, it's tragically evident every night on the news that a childlike sense of trust and wonder is no defence at all against ruthless bombardment. The little town, the inn, and the nearby stable lie in ruins, the shepherds have been detained, and the magi have been stopped at the border crossing. It all looks pretty bleak. But, there's no harm in trying, is there? Calling all angels! Calling all angels!

1. In the late 17th century, a Swiss medic named Johannes Hofer observed that people forced to live far away from home, such as soldiers or those sent abroad in domestic service, sometimes experienced a psychological distress so acute that it could even prove fatal. Hofer named the phenomenon "nostalgia", combining the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain). The original, literal meaning of nostalgia, then, is the pain of a frustrated desire to return to one’s place of origin. As it happens, an enforced return to one's place of origin is an idea that lies at the very root of the Nativity narrative: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed ... And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city" (Luke 2). Which is an equal and opposite sort of pain, lacking a handy word, and not unrelated to what became of Christmas once the sentimentalists and business folk got their hands on it.