A long time ago in the dim and distant past, some time in December, our ancestors in Northern Europe had been observing with concern and despair how the days were getting shorter and how their great friend the sun on which they depended for their lives was gradually failing them, climbing ever lower in the sky. Then, around the 25th, they realized that the trend had definitely changed. They breathed a collective sigh of relief and decided to have a party, some say for twelve days: Yule was born.
When Christianity came along considerably later, it was handy for the Church to appropriate and subvert an existing festivity to mark the birth of Jesus. Indeed the symbolism of the resurgence of the sun is good for the coming of the Lord on Earth. (The timing of Easter too, by the way, also represents a hi-jacking of earlier celebrations of Spring, fertitity and returning life, chiming neatly with the idea of resurrection.)
I have no time for people who moan that the true Christian meaning of Christmas is lost, as Christmas, Yule or merely the Winter Solstice, is a heathen festivity far pre-dating Christianity itself. Indeed the modern popular celebration of Christmas, in its most obvious and omnipresent symbols, is deeply pagan.
In the Soviet union where Christmas was banned as a religious festival, they kept all the trappings (Christmas tree, gifts, Father Christmas as “Uncle Frost” etc) and used them at New Year.
I’m not denying the Christian element of Christmas, it’s there in residual form as indeed Christianity is in Western society and that is quite appropriate as it has informed the history of Western civilization, but it’s not actually what is on most people’s minds. How many people go to church even on Christmas Day in modern Europe ?
Christmas as we know it is the major feast of modern western consumer society: just consider the time it lasts (well in excess of twelve days today), the money spent on it, its inescapability on our streets, in shops and public buildings, on the television; the sheer volume of “traditional” rituals that it is compulsory to honour in order not to appear to be a latter-day unreformed Scrooge. Everybody has to “do” Christmas in a way that is true of no other feast in our society.
That’s fine with me: societies need great shared events for a communal out-pouring of emotion. And since the key-note of that emotion is a spirit of giving, good will and tolerance, then why not ?
It’s true though that like any other ritual or event on which many expectations ride, there is an initial weariness at having to go through it all again, which gradually subsides as you get into the swing after a few glasses and leads to an ultimate mellow feeling of gladness.
The truth is that without the fixed date and excuse for coming together, a lot of us might never get round to it. The family reunion with the shared meal, the office party, the effort of writing people cards to stay in touch are all extemely worthwhile activities for maintaining the bonds that keep us together.
I shall consider some aspects of Christmas as I experience them.
Christmas past:
The main thing I remember about Christmas as a child was the excitement about the impending visit of Father Christmas. I was a believer till quite an advanced age, when the terrible truth was revealed to me by my younger brother. We used to get up of course at some insanely early hour to open the presents. Later things got more relaxed. I was fond of the big Boxing Day family gathering with old-fashioned parlour games.
From student age onwards for about ten years I used to spend Christmas with Jon Day and other friends in the Southern French Alps, where it was truly white. We stayed in genuine moutain chalets at le Clot Raffin, without electricity, or les Rochas, without running water, both twenty minutes walk up hill from where we could park. After days out walking and skiing, we enjoyed long evenings of rustic camaraderie. We didn’t bother with the presents but manfully produced full scale dinner with the ceremony of the stuffing of the turkey and Nick’s pudding made numerous months before - with some pride he infomed our German vegetarian friends that it contained real beef suet. After there would be silly games and music making. They were some of the most hilarious Christmases I can remember. The last times we took more comfortable quarters to bring along partners and children, but it wasn’t quite the same.
Then we spent a few Christmases as a family with my parents at their wintering second home in Hermanus, South Africa (which they have sold now). That was fun and quite exotic to be plunged from the depths of grey Belgian winter into the height of the African summer. We once got ferocious sunburn just from flying a kite on the overcast beach on Christmas Day.
The last few years we’ve just stayed at home. That’s what our teenage children with their own social lives prefer. Actually when you’ve spent over 100 nights away from home over the year as I have and just feel generally tired after the long slog from September, it’s quite pleasant to drift around home with not much specific to do.
Christmas party:
At SCIC the English booth organizes a party for staff and freelance colleagues and partners etc in the run up to Christmas. Every year a group of us write and perform a pantomime with the compulsory elements of cross-dressing, bad jokes, musical numbers, work-related satire and under-rehearsing. We certainly enjoy putting it on as a shared activity that is really rather special, and judging from the laughs the audience seem to enjoy the show too. This year our Director General who was the butt of a lot of the jibes came along and took it in good spirit (as a version of Dicken’s “Christmas Carol” it had a happy ending after all). It was rather like a medieval Lord of Misrule celebration. I think that’s healthy.
Christmas tree:
I quite like getting a real Christmas tree, however environmentally unsound it might be. Plastic ones just don’t do it for me. I favour a Noordman fir, pricier but the needles stay on for the duration. Quite by coincidence, Clara and I probably saw ours growing during a walk in the Ardennes this autumn: we passed a small plantation of them and on closer inspection we found they had labels on them with the name of the nursery where I buy ours in Brussels. I quite like that, I know our tree had a happy life (can’t claim that with certainty for the turkey). We don’t have lights, just predominantly red and gold baubles. Our star has a socialist republic look that I find appealing. It’s fun to pile up the presents underneath it in anticipation.
Christmas cards:
I seem to send out my cards later every year. It’s nice to get them, so I suppose I had better send them. It’s perhaps an artifical way of keeping in touch, but it’s better than nothing. I prefer a brief personal note to a triumpant round robin. I toyed with the idea of giving everyone the address for this blog, but decided against it.
Christmas shopping:
Christmas shopping is of course ideally done gradually through the year as original opportunities to purchase novel personalized gifts present themselves. Or even better, one could make one’s own. Of course in practice it’s not like that and an intrinsic part of the Christmas experience is being forced to participate in the loathsome Christmas shopping rush where the sheer heaving hysteria is designed to provoke panic purchases as patience expires with long queues and naff music. They have a word for this in German “Kaufwut”, which sort of translates as “shopping frenzy” but is snappier. When I lived in Germany I traipsed into nearby Dortmund to brave the crowds and buy some things on a pre-Christmas Saturday when the shops had deigned to stay open in the afternoon for once and I was amused to see at the entrance to a big department store a machine for people to check their own blood pressure.
Worshipping at the temple of consumerism is one of the defining moments of the modern Christmas and the macro-economists will tell you just how important that is for our general well-being in making the economy go round.
Christmas gifts:
I actually enjoy trying to think of and find Christmas gifts for the family, perhaps more than receiving them. The surprise is definitely part of the fun. Some gifts are inevitably more successful than others, but as they say, it’s the thought that counts.
Christmas present:
Our usual routine is to get up late, do the presents, have brunch, go for a walk in the little daylight there is left and on returning get stuck into preparing the big meal, after which couching out to watch a film seems like a good idea.
Christmas dinner:
I’ve always been a sucker for the roast turkey, for which I assume responsibility. Thomas says “If it’s so good, why do we only have it once a year”. The answer is because it takes so long. It’s the Everest of cooking that has to be climbed because it’s there. I like to stuff it myself with the giblets, onion, chestnuts, sausage meat or whatever else is going, swathe it in smoky bacon and add chunky potatoes to roast in the juice during the last hour. After all that with two veg and assorted trimmings, I have reached the conclusion that Christmas pudding is a course too far; much to the relief of my family.
Christmas music:
Some great classical sacred music has been written in association with Christmas. I like to listen to Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” or Handel’s “Messiah” while working on the turkey. Christmas carols have some of the finest tunes in the hymn book and are great to belt out singing together in the right company. Sadly they are also served up in saccharine versions as muzak for shopping. There is a fine line to tread here and many an artiste has produced deeply horrible Christmas records. The one I do like is Lennon’s “Merry Christmas, War is over”” that retains a certain provocative ironic edge, the line “War is over, if you want it” reminiscent of Brecht’s one-liner “Stellt euch vor, es ist Krieg, und niemand geht hin” (Imagine there’s a war on, and nobody goes). For all the Christmas cheer, nastiness continues somewhere in this world.
However, for most of us in peaceful and prosperous surroundings, Christmas is there to serve as a feel-good moment and an occasion to forget the negative and concentrate on the positive, to renew our confidence in humanity and the values of being together. A tall order it may be, but worth having a go at.
Merry Christmas!
