I dare say the theologians have neat, hand-wavy explanations to tidy all this up to their own satisfaction, but they have never seemed particularly inclined to share these with the rest of us: too difficult and too profound, no doubt, for their simple-minded flock of metaphorical sheep to grasp (that would be us). Or perhaps rather too transparently aligned with Old Testament messianic prophesies and cunningly superimposed onto long-standing pagan winter festivities (see my post It's All About the Children).
More prosaically, of course, not everyone on the planet regards January 1st as the start of a New Year, or even as "January 1st", but let's not get into that. Packaging the two events together works for us, not least because such propitiously-timed seasonal goings-on have been going on in these light-starved regions forever. Come back, sun, please come back! Oh, all right, since you ask so nicely... Hooray! Party Time! For school-kids, working stiffs and wage-slaves (that's most of the population, I'd imagine) it's a welcome break from the workaday norm, a week or two studded with twinkling lights, seasonal treats, and officially-endorsed occasions for anticipation and celebration.
It has been becoming a much more private and secular holiday over the years, too. It has been a while since any kids came round to knock on our door "carolling", even in its vestigial form, i.e. waiting for the door to open and launching into a truncated, 10-second chorus of "We wish you a merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!" Unlike Hallowe'en's trickle treating [2], I don't think either carollers or most carollees had much idea of what was supposed to happen next, leading to nothing more than a series of awkward doorstep moments. Even the Rotarians seem to have given up trawling the streets around here with their canned carols blaring from a van, and rattling their collecting buckets. I don't miss it; "Silent Night", indeed.
Speaking purely personally, Christmas lost most of its charm for me around age 11 when my sister – eight years older than me – left home under the very traditional shadow of a hastily-arranged marriage. My parents seemed suddenly to fade into a perpetually-tired middle-age but then, and worse from my p-o-v, quickly settled into the role of doting grandparents. Christmas from then on rarely took place under our own roof, and I found I had been handed a minor walk-on part as "churlish teenage uncle". So I would take every opportunity to escape and begin the study of the ways of delinquency with like-minded friends, hanging about in various dark and frosty corners. Which was actually a lot more "magical" than Christmas, although not without risk: I was careful and I was lucky, but a few of us didn't make it out of our teens alive or without the unwanted gift of a brand-new criminal record.
Having your own children revives the fun of Christmas, of course, but brings with it the stress of actually having to make the fun happen. It takes some kind of domestic saint to prepare a celebratory meal with unaccustomed ingredients and for an unusual quantity of diners, including at least one vegetarian and/or other dietary restrictions, or to take joy in ensuring that the right gifts have been bought and that an acceptable balance of generosity between recipients has been achieved. The whole thing is a nightmare of potentially disastrous pitfalls: a turkey that has resisted roasting for hours beyond the calculated timing, let's say, and served up by an angry cook far later than scheduled – accompanied by overcooked, warmed-up vegetables – to a sullen and sarcastic family is nobody's idea of a festive feast. Or so I'm told.
Sadly, any compensatory seasonal sparkle does begin to fade once your children are no longer lighting up the house with the exuberant wattage of their excitement, and really just want to escape and study the ways of delinquency with their like-minded friends. Nothing brings on the indigestion quite like lying awake at 3 a.m., wondering when your teenage daughter will stagger home from a night out clubbing, all the while mentally apologising to your deceased parents for having done much the same to them. Or, ah, so I imagine.
Since those anxious years, for us Christmas has evolved into a more relaxed family get-together on neutral ground: generally a rented cottage near the sea in Dorset, big enough to let the different folks indulge their different strokes – it is frankly impossible to read in the same room as whooping kidults playing Mario Kart – but cosy enough for congenial gatherings around the table or a log-burning stove. From there, the two of us will generally retreat to our Bristol flat for a quiet New Year, returning here to Southampton before Twelfth Night, like Tudor aristocrats. Which reminds me of one of those strange marginal annotations Coleridge added to the 1817 edition of The Ancient Mariner, from Part IV:
In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.
No servants await us at home, of course, but we have their 21st century equivalents: there's milk on the doorstep, the heating is on, there's food in the freezer, and the Wi-Fi leaps eagerly back into action. As does the Ancient Blogger:
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
1. My partner's niece, having grown up in the distinctly cross-cultural environment of Bristol, as a child referred to Muslim women in hijabs or other head coverings as "shepherds", due to their resemblance to children dressed up for a Nativity play. I know! I'm afraid it's a coinage too cute not to adopt, at least safely in private.
2. Another cute and useful coinage by a neighbour's small son.
No comments:
Post a Comment