So Nell, you hate Christmas do you? Bah, humbug!

Every year, somewhere in the torrent of Christmas-related guffle that the media pour into our consciousness, there is the Grinch piece, the 'I'm going to tell you how much I hate Christmas' article. Such articles are as much part of our preparation for Christmas as the 'we've lost sight of the true meaning' rants and the avalanche of charity appeals each more tragic than the next.

We need people who write stuff like this:

Christmas is the stick with which millions of us beat ourselves into brandy-soaked agony for being poor, single, childless, lonely, or simply bad at being jolly. It’s one thing to be single, skint and surrounded by dysfunctional relatives, but it’s quite another when the entire capitalist world is telling you that this is the most magical time of the year. We seem to have lost the script to a pantomime we never even believed in. We have ruined Christmas, without even trying.

Indeed this article (being as it's in the Guardian and all that) fills a specific sub-sector of the 'I hate Christmas' genre - the 'I hate Christmas because of all the advertising, commercialism and evil capitalist exploitation' piece. You see folks, we really don't have any choice in the matter as the glamour of capitalism's seasonal fairies has enchanted us - we are led astray by the glitter of fairy dust. Now is not the time to deal with the ignorance of this view - suffice it to say that it's nonsense.

However, it's necessary for us to have these sorts of writings just so people like me can tell the authors (in this case one Nell Frizzell) to stop being pathetic, grumpy old kill-joys and get down with the spirit of the time. To remind them of this:

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.” 

For this is the message of the Nell Frizzells of our world - like Ebeneezer Scrooge they see Christmas as 'just a day':

...if we really do want to spread comfort and joy this year, we should accept it for what it is; a day. Just a day. Whatever Roy Wood says.

You see our Nell sees Christmas as an intrusion into her misery and her celebration of the misery of others. The sad thing is that (and I've no issue with Nell sitting in the corner with her pet lip, arms crossed and definitely not getting involved in anything that seems even the slightest bit like festivity) what the 'I hate Christmas' brigade don't appreciate is that, if we didn't have Christmas, we'd have to invent it or something pretty much like it. And the very reason for that is that very gloom, misery and despondency that surrounds so many of us - especially in the dank, dreary darkness of winter. The thing Nell evokes in her sorry tale of Christmas past and Christmas present.

More to the point (and it's a very important point) Christmas is still the very antithesis of that supposed selfish capitalism. Even ignoring the God bit, Christmas is a time when we give presents, send blessings and share stuff with our neighbours. Most of the year we don't sing songs with other people (I'll be carolling at The George in Cullingworth tomorrow - beer and song, what could be better), we don't make a specific effort to consider our fellow men near and far, and we don't make an effort to recognise the bonds of family and friendship that hold our society together.

It is people like Nell Frizzell who are the selfish ones (and let me stress that I'm not saying they can't be selfish, just that their selfishness is sad and pathetic) with their self-righteous, posing rejection of Christmas. Po-faced and preachy, Nell refuses to play - no gifts for friends, no smile, no games. Just nonsense about capitalism.  Nell doesn't even plan to replace expensive largess with making a cheaper, personal effort to join in the spirit of sharing - nope, Nell plans to do nothing, to sit there pretending she's a better person because she's opted out of Christmas. Well she's wrong and there's only one thing to say to such people...

Bah, Humbug!

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Why retail isn't the future of town centres...

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For the past several years I've been banging on about what I call "leisure and pleasure" as the future of town centres rather than shops and offices. It is absolutely the case that retail does not represent either a solution or a future for town centres - this is nothing to do with the evil supermarket or insufficiently tough planning restrictions. It is about how our shopping habits are changing with the result being:

*£6bn – Online spending in the UK in 2004
*£23bn – Online spending in the UK 2010
*£1.3 bn – Level of m-commerce in the UK 2011
*£19bn – predicted level of m-commerce in 2019
*15,000 – reduction in town centre stores between 2000-2009
* 6.5% fall in number of town centre shops by 2014

We really do need to rethink town centres - to consider how they entertain us, how they provide space for formal and informal events, for celebration and for fun. Yet everywhere - and my city of Bradford is no different - local councils, planners and developers are attached limpet-like to big retail developments as some sort of salvation for struggling centres. When will it dawn on them that they're wrong?

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Easter - a thought, maybe a blessing

 

We celebrate Easter - the festival of Christ's resurrection. The wonder of that revelation inspires great good and sets us on a path of truth. But is this the only truth? After all the word, Easter, dates from before Christ's death and rising:

The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos."  Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. 

 The goddess of the dawn would be a spirit of fertility - a celebration of the fresh day in the same way that a goddess of spring would welcome the new life this season brings. Which I guess brings us to the rabbits - yet not in celebration of their proverbial fecundity but, it seems, in confusion with their relation, the hare:

In his late 19th century study of the Hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cites numerous incidents of folk custom involving the hare around the period of Easter in Northern Europe. Billson says that “whether there was a goddess named Eostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island.”

So what is it about hares that brought about such reverence during the onset of Spring? Was it their memorable courtship - we forget that hares boxing is the girl checking out the boy not two boys scrapping over the female:

 Hare were - in their mad march way - a great symbol of the explosion of life that occurred each Spring. The active, excitable, aggressive life matched with that other great Easter symbol the egg.

So what of Easter - are you like me witnessing a new summer emerging fresh, scrubbed and new from the dark ground? Are you looking to your family and using the time to eat, drink and make merry with them? This is the message of Easter for me - the joy of new life and the salvation that new life brings. A time to reflect on growth, goodness and the wellspring of ideas.

Above all, Easter, like all our festivals represents a time when the magic of nature comes a little closer. We hesitate to touch that magic, we wrap it up in silver foil, make it from chocolate and surround it with marzipan balls. But it is still there - a spirit of newness, a breath of joyous exuberance in Spring.

I like to think that is why those hares dance - at the joy of Spring.

Happy Easter!

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Why we should celebrate England!

For most of my life St George’s Day has been on no consequence or importance. We haven’t marched, got any more drunk than usual or waxed lyrically about the wonders of England (to be absolutely honest we did march and wave flags – St George’s Day was always an important occasion for Scouts).

Suddenly – and delightfully – after generations of subsuming Englishness into the nebulous nothing that is “British” we have rediscovered that there are awesome, incredible, creative, big, cheering, tuneful and traditional things about being English that those poor, shivering Celts don’t have. And we should celebrate…

…we should celebrate:

Pies, puddings, pork scratchings, pints of foaming ale.

…we should shout out loud about:

Duck races, scarecrows, country houses, cockney rhyming slang

…and we should dance and sing to:

Morrismen, hornpipes, skipping songs and Elgar

Above all this we should stand up proud, drink our beer and cider, smoke our cigars and remember how bloody lucky we are to be living in England. Ignore those PC, hand-wringing naysayers. Stick two fingers up at those who see pride in place as something to be sniffed at. Celebrate the myths of England! And recite Kipling's "Charm":

“Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation

Lay that earth upon thy heart
And thy sickness shall depart!”

So we have a mythical, dragon slayer for a patron. I remain a proud Englishman. And grateful at last to say how magical are the places of England – beyond compare, places of wonder.

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Iacchus returns to Eleusis

The time has come for Persephone to return. The darkness of winter is passed. We must journey again to Eleusis, celebrate again our vision of holy night and free the world of growth from the decadence of death. Return to the place where we watched spring pass into darkness, where the spirit took us into oblivion the better to survive the terror of winter.

But first we shall prepare – Iacchus is invoked, we drink, we gather, we process. You cannot rescue spring from the clutches of death without guidance and Jack will be that guide. And Jack will lead us Eleusis, to the home of spring’s release. And Jack, through his drink, will provide that release.

Let us celebrate all that is spring – new shoots on trees, the daffodils, the smells of fresh earth and the sounds of birds calling out those who would threaten their eggs and their offspring. And let us do so in that time honoured way of man – with a party. Let us ignore those in black hats, white coats and brown suits who remain caught in the endless grey drear of winter – who wallow in gloom and wish to bring others into their world of boredom and control.

Iacchus will return to Eleusis. And if we are wise we will, like Socrates before, join him on this journey.

Wednesday Whimsy: "Away in the Manger" and the spirit of Christmas

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Whether it’s the choir stalls of a fine cathedral, the nativity at a school in the rough end of town or a family gathered round a piano (or more likely these days an on screen karaoke) there is one carol we all know…whether we’re five or ninety five - “Away in a Manger”. It’s the first one we learn (fighting it out with “Little Donkey” for that privilege) and the simplest and easiest to learn.

For me it sums up everything about Christmas – yes there’s the God stuff but, as importantly, there’s the sense of wonder, anticipation and excitement we see in the faces of children (and old softies like me).

Now some grumpy humbugs want to portray our modern Christmas as an unwarranted and excessive festival of consumption. Every year some self-appointed guardian of the “real Christmas” pops up to lecture us on how all that eating, drinking, partying and spending isn’t what it’s all about – we should instead be all puritanically frowny about the sins of the world.

Not me. I love our modern Christmas with all the over-the-top kitsch, the tear-jerking movies, the schmaltzy music, the excessive lights and the over-eating (especially the over-eating). It is the great celebration of all the things – good, bad, highbrow and lowbrow, Christian and secular – that define our culture. And, for me, “Away in a Manager” with its plodding melody, it’s slightly maudlin lyrics and its simplistic message is part of that culture.

Oh, and "Away in a Manger" is guaranteed to make me cry – every time!

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