Snow

Tags

Candles, Christianity, Christmas, Feast, Festival, fire, humour, religion, Saturnalia, Snow, solstice, tree, victoria, Winterfest, Yule

Some stories demand attention.   Any writer can find them – or rather, they find him, eagerly salivating little gangs that pounce each time he opens his laptop and switches on.  Headlines, oddities, issues that invite comment, or exercise a turn of phrase.  Stories that beg to be told.

So here I am, staring at the keys.

Christmas stares back at me.

Christmas makes it abundantly clear:  it does not beg to be told.  All it wants is to be put back in its box.   Its greatest hope is to be left in peace.   Over the centuries it has been written about incessantly; it has been turned over, forensically examined, boiled down and put into test tubes, sculpted by the greatest, depicted by the painty-est (yes, I know it’s a new word – I just invented it) and sung without mercy.

There is nothing about Christmas we do not already know.

We know that St. Nicholas began a legend when (allegendly – another new one, do you like it?) he dropped bags of money down the chimneys of a deceased friend’s daughters to save them from penury.  We know the first Christmas trees were religious symbols Eastern European people hung upside-down from their ceilings (or medieval equivalent) as appeasement to evil spirits, just as ‘decking the halls with holly’ dates back to days when the dark woods were never far from our doors, and we needed to be sure our friendly sprites and fairies would feel at home when the party started.

We are aware our celebrations are intrinsically pagan, and early Christians hung their own festival of Christ’s Mass upon them for convenience, because it was easier to get converts if they didn’t try to impose additional celebrations on people whose winter resources were limited.   They understood even then that Jesus was not born on December 25^th:  they argued about His actual birthday from the very beginning.

So where is the new angle?  What startling revelation can I bring?

I have seated Christmas on my window sill, hoping a little cold air will wake it up.  It just stares at me, blankly.  Beyond the glass, Washington Irving’s rotund red fellow ho-ho-ho’s at me before fading away; heading back, presumably, to his inhospitable den at the North Pole.   How the hell does he cover Australia in midsummer from there and still get home before dawn?   Albert and Vicky smile regally from their cardboard portrait, the first Christmas card, before disappearing into an envelope to be despatched by a postal service that hasn’t been invented yet, making me wonder – was it an ill-advised penchant for adorning our Christmas trees with lighted candles that stimulated creation of a national fire service?

“No.” Christmas assures me.  “Insurance companies created the first organised fire brigades.  Nicholas Burbon initiated one after the Great Fire of London to protect properties he insured.  The first organised municipal brigade was probably Edinburgh’s, in 1824.”  It squirms in a weak attempt at enthusiasm.  “That’s something new for you!”

“But nothing to do with Christmas.”

“Oh, well then.”  It appears to be dropping off to sleep.  I give it a prod.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, WHAT?”

“I want a new angle.”

“There isn’t any.”

“Just something – anything – a bit different?”

It tucks its chin into its chest, adopting the shrivelled appearance it always has just before twelfth night, when nearly all its needles have dropped off.   “Snow.”  It mutters.

Snow.

Snow, of course, is the great enemy in Eastern Europe’s icy winter heart.   The Germanic peoples of history knew all about snow – the white blast that drove them to huddle within their huts, sealed up and buried, for the winter of the year.   It was an enforced hibernation, a somnolent wait for the coming of spring, and a habit as old as time.

Equal in tradition was Yule (the Nordic houl), the time of the hunt.  It began once the harvest was gathered in, and, just like the harvest, it culminated in a great feast – the feast of Yule.  Carcasses kept frozen by frost could be stored, so as to provision the months of incarceration.  Given a good hunting season, whatever was left over was consumed in feasting, sending celebrants to their hovels with full stomachs and hopeful hearts.

The Yule Festival – kept more formally by the Romans as ‘Saturnalia’, equally an occasion for seven days of self-indulgence – had added significance, for peoples of early times, as the winter solstice; important for those who relied so heavily upon the mood of the sun, and therefore a religious occasion:  of course, wherever there was a religious occasion the witches could be expected to put in an appearance, so it was a time of superstition and fear, too.

Perhaps it was that weak underbelly of terror that the Christians, four hundred years after the time when Christ is said to have lived, latched onto in the spread of their gentler creed; but it took all that time before Yule could be reborn as Christmas.

So there’s my angle.  It isn’t really new, and I’m sure you knew it already, but I thought I should just remind you that whenever someone laments Christmas’s ‘commercialism’, and insists upon the ‘true message’ of Christmas, it is you who has the moral high ground.   It is the time of the solstice and it is a feast:  the Romans gave gifts at Saturnalia, and so should you.

Christmas looks at me archly.  “Can I go back in my box, now?”

“Yes, of course.  Until next year, at least.   Oh, and thank you for ‘snow’.”

 

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Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Ostrich

Tags

boxes, cat, cheer, children, Christmas, decorations, dog, fairy, family, festive season, grandparents, holiday, holly, humor, lights, ritual, sprouts, tree

There’s no putting it off, no burying your head in the sand.  It’s time.

Reach into the back of the narrow cupboard, scrabble determinedly among the boxes of forgotten essentials – those things you swore you couldn’t live without, ten years ago; untouched since then, save in the cause of this one annual mission.

No, no you don’t want them – the sandwich toaster is probably too rusty to be considered hygienic now, those surgical stockings have a vaguely unsavoury air, and the  collapsible Zimmer frame – well, that never was a good idea.

No, these boxes, these deeply buried caskets of history; these are what you seek.  Entombed within them are the recorded embarrassments of a decade, the memories of a generation.

Out they must come, regardless of strained shoulders, moted eyes or shattered nerves:  out, damned reindeer onesie with the indelible stain of wine; out, festive sweater with the moth- perforated sleeves!  Let the dusty sepulchres disgorge their gold and silver glittery guts and the green and tangled wires display their tiny coloured bulbs for one more desperate, plaintive display.  Bring forth the coloured balls, the battered seraphim with their trumpets bent, the dangly gleamers and the strangly streamers.

It is Christmas.

The halls must be decked with holly, the windows sprayed with sticky snow.  The innocent spruce you murdered in its infancy must be nailed to that special piece of wood left in the garden by mistake.  Woodlice, unhomed, seeking cover beneath your couch must wait for the plate of minced pies laid carelessly upon the floor.   Impaled now, the tree’s sad corpse shall be shrouded in precious colours and gaily flickering lights, and though it may be no more than a skeleton by the Great Day, only sad needles piled about its feet will bear witness to its decomposition.

The fairy, of course, is greatest and last.  Poor Gladys, though.   Strapped by her knickers each year for twenty years to as many different treetops, will her stoicism survive another season of goodwill?

As you perform the ritual do you catch her eye, are you touched by a savour of her suffering? You wonder, does she share your festive spirit?

Yet custom must be observed:  your tree bejewelled before the speculative eye of the cat, food prepared before the ravenous dreamings of the dog.   Ladders must be climbed, curses uttered, A & E Departments attended. all in the name of the Winterfest, and there is no alternative, save social ostracism and offspring misery.  Stomachs may grumble, purses may squeak and balloons may pop;  you may even need a second mortgage, but you must conform.  You must endure ten hours of  Grandpa’s explanation of chaos theory  as it affects brussels sprouts, Grandma’s nostalgic belief that things were better ‘in the war’, cousin Tom’s vicious racism and Sister-in Law Bernice’s outrageous capacity for Sangria.   Yes, it is Christmas!

And when the day is past – when the tree lies where Grandpa fell on it, the dog has returned most of its turkey titbits to the Persian rug and Bernice has finally stopped snoring:  when that ludicrously expensive early learning toy stands neglected in a corner while your youngest is upstairs playing happily with the box –

“He’ll grow into it.”

When Tom’s fourth Def Leppard CD has at last run its course, then you can relax upon the dry part of your couch and be satisfied you have done your part.  You might spare a thought for Gladys thankfully limping back into obscurity, but your dreams will be all of repacking boxes.

Compliments of the season, everyone!