The Four Christmasses
I think that there are three different sorts of Christmas.
At least, I think that this is true in England. You probably have a very different idea of what it’s all about, or what combination of the below makes a real christmas. Or at least an ideal one.
The Christmas of Winter is perhaps the hardest to define.
I took the picture below not five minutes’ walk from my family home, near a town called Royston in Hertfordshire in the South-East of England. The landscape here is the rolling of hills as they die- the last leg of the Chilterns before the great flat plains of East Anglia.
There’s something about walking through a patch of forest or heath- particularly if you’ve known it your entire life. I know that these hills used to be mountains taller than the alps. I also recognise every occasional face that passes, with its attendant canine for walking.
In winter, as in Autumn, this place comes into its own. The trees are almost more beautiful when they’re naked. The air is cold, the wind sudden and biting and fresh from a distant place - old winds, from the North Sea, Scandinavia, the impossible stretch of the Atlantic or even Siberia (there’s precious little high ground between here and the Ural Mountains, after all). Cold old winds on cold old hills. You walk to stay warm, and end up walking much further because of it.
If it snows, then that consolidates the feeling. Winter evokes such a range of Proustian almost-memories, all by itself, as long as you can get away from the towns for long enough to let it. The seaside, with its eternal, sleepy welcome. The river, still flowing through Autumn’s mulch, sparkling and bitter cold.
So there is a part of Christmas that reminds me of this. Small men in a big world, older than they can know, huddling together for a fraction of time, lighting fires to keep out the cold. This is what remains of the Pagan feast that Christmas has superceded.
The Christmas of Christ is found in the glowing of church windows, the opulence of old arts, the more tragic or melodic carols. It is infused with pain (as only a Christian myth really can be); we are constantly reminded that, even as a child was born, he is already on his path to death.
So it is sad. It is also magnificently huge, richly detailed. There is a tapestry of faith, and for many, this is the tip of that iceberg. Cavernous spaces are filled with song. Here, more than in any secular celebration, one might feel part of something far, far larger.
The Victorian Christmas shapes everything that we mean and understand of the holiday today. It has been exported countless times, informs, in some small way, almost every small celebration of it.
It was, to a large extent, invented by one man: Charles Dickens. The rules of a modern christmas (secular redemption, tightly-packed urban spaces filled with people and neighbourliness, snowmen and fireside stories and ghosts) are all to be found in that British author’s canon.
And then there is the Christmas of Araby. Distinct, yet vital to all the above. It’s in our Turkish Delight, our oranges and Satsumas, our sultanas, our raisins, the perfumes we spend so much money on, the dates and figs we stir into our puddings.
This mythical middle-eastern world has never really existed. We encounter it in the wistful writings of Europeans- James Joyce, the Romantic poets. We also might find it in the stories we have idealised over centuries; Aladdin, Ali-Baba, The Thousand Nights. These are all components of a christmas that projects itself into fantasy.
And all of these Christmasses are, in their ways, escapes. For just a moment, everyone tomorrow might find it in themselves to be optimists.
Do you find yourself in one or more of these conceptual festivals? Or am I just wittering on for no reason at all?
nothing wrong with a warm xmas…I’ve just written this from my ipod!!!
wish i’d read this earlier…i’m certainly going to turn to your blog more frequently in my quest for fulfilling procrastination aids ^_^ love your style. I’m curious as to what fiction you’ve been reading lately.
I utterly agree about the beauty of winter. I think I love it so much because it’s *visceral* somehow. Cavernous and neglected. Just that thin sound of a jackdaw to fill a cold evening is enough to set me off on a an indulgent spate of childhood nostalgia. But, in the moment, it feels very meaningful indeed. ^_^