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More Musings on Christmas

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on Dec 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »


Contrary to my earlier post on this subject ten days ago it’s now 1st December and I don’t feel Christmassy at all! So this post is going to act as a short, gloomy antidote to the sense of childlike expectation that inhabited that piece.

Being English, my natural response is to blame the weather – it remains unconscionably mild, despite dire warnings in September that we would be mired in deep snow long before now, as we were last year. This morning’s intermittent squalls and drizzle add to the cheerless atmosphere that pervades our high streets and shopping centres.

Minor celebrities may have descended to earth to switch on the lights and begin rehearsals for their pantomimes, anxious retailers may be offering ever more tantalising discounts and Dean Martin may be imploring it to snow, but there is a pervading gloom that I have witnessed in four separate Kent towns over the same number of days this week.  The economic situation is, of course, an important factor.  That said, I do not see any obvious signs that people are reining in their spending, with bargains available on so many popular gift items.

No, what is most striking is the grudging, almost resentful manner in which people are going about their festive preparations.  Christmas seems an imposition, and an expensive one at that, at a time when the traditional British approach of “getting by” is what is preoccupying many people.  This is mirrored too in the paucity of Christmas trees, lights and decorations adorning domestic homes.  I cannot recall seeing so few this “late” into the season.

Despite the prompt I gave myself over a week ago, the CDs and DVDs continue to hibernate in dusty ignorance in assorted cupboards around the house.  Billy Bob Thornton will be in an especially foul mood when he is roused to reprise his seminal role as Bad Santa. I have even resisted the blandishments of the twenty four hour TV movies channel too, though that is not that difficult as it generally churns out a surfeit of bland, syrupy made for TV films, interspersed all too rarely with classics such as A Christmas Carol with the wonderful Alistair Sim.

So no wassailing or figgy pudding for me yet, nor have I sampled a single mince pie.  But perhaps it’s just me, running ahead of myself, like those young children singing Jingle Bells under their breath in my previous post.
 
Kate Rusby’s Christmas concert at the Barbican tomorrow, with its mellow mix of popular and South Yorkshire carols, may well do the trick.  The weather forecasters have indicated that a cold spell will descend upon us at the weekend, which should also add to the seasonal atmosphere.   And next week heralds the customary round of Christmas lunches, dinners and drinks, though they are likely to add more to my waistline and credit card bill than my spirits.

But I should not be complaining.  After all, I began my previous post by lamenting that Christmas forced itself upon me earlier and earlier with each passing year.  I can’t have it both ways can I?

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A Sobering Drink at Christmas

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Nov 24, 2011| 1 Comment »


“Care for a glass of ginger wine, Eddie?”, my grandfather would ask his son-in-law on our pre-Christmas visit to his house.

This was the cue for all the colour in my father’s face to be drained from it whilst he summoned up a festive smile and accepted the heartfelt, annual offer.  Whereas his family “liked a drink”, my mother’s side were teetotal (she virtually gave up alcohol herself after my christening party – that must either have been a great night, or it had suddenly dawned upon her that she would need to keep a clear head in bringing me up).  Apart from enjoying the traditional Christmas Day meal, on the table at 12 noon sharp just like any other day, my grandparents honoured Christmas in their customary restrained and homely manner.

My dad was essentially a beer drinker, but could be persuaded to partake of a gin and tonic or a glass of wine, (or, frankly, anything) if it was offered to him. Ginger wine, however, was not a  drink worthy to celebrate the Yuletide with in his mind. His misery was compounded by the fact that only he and his brother-in-law were ever afforded the doubtful privilege of being permitted to let the stuff pass their lips.  Consequently, the same bottle must have lasted a decade or more.  In fact, I don’t recall it ever being replaced (they were small measures).  Perhaps it was grandad’s pointed annual reminder to his son-in-laws to treat his daughters well, or else they would be answerable to him by being forced to endure a second glass.

My grandparents’ sobriety was all the more remarkable given that, for the last forty years of their lives, they lived next door to the neighbourhood pub.  It had both a public and saloon bar, as well as a “jug and bottle” (off-licence to anyone under the age of forty in this country and, for my continental and transatlantic readers, a separate room where people could buy drinks to take home without having to enter the pub). It was a raucous but friendly establishment.

I often wondered how they managed to sleep in the bedroom adjacent to it, especially at closing time when revellers spilled out onto the street, lingering long and loud before shambling home.  I suppose it helped that my “(Big) Nan”, as opposed to my father’s mother who was, you guessed it, “Little Nan” (the distinction was immediately evident on meeting), was stone deaf, though she always refuted the accusation (after her doting husband had both pulled faces and shouted at her for five minutes).

My grandfather – funny how I never called him “Big Grandad” when he was around eight inches taller than my father’s father – had worked and brought his family of two daughters and one son up in a London fire station during the Blitz and, as a result, I was in awe of him.  Chain smoking filterless “Senior Service” cigarettes, warming his backside against an open fire, pouring tea from his cup into the saucer before drinking it and constantly smoothing back his full head of bristling black hair, even at the age of eighty, he appeared even cooler in my young eyes (“old” people were cool then).

The manner in which he cherished his wife of sixty years (and fianceé of another seven) bespoke a deep love, although it made conversation with visitors redundant as the volume on the tiny black and white television set had to be turned up to maximum, especially when Double Your Money, Take Your Pick or Sunday Night at the London Palladium were on.

But back to the ginger wine, Stone’s Original Green Ginger Wine to be precise. Made to the original (1740) secret recipe that includes raisins and pure Australian ground ginger, it was an especially popular drink in the sixties when this story is set.  But I think it is best drunk with something else, preferably with a spirit or in a cocktail. Whisky Mac, a blend of whisky and Stone’s, was an order I heard many times whilst hovering on the shadowy doorsteps of pubs and clubs at that time. Given that it is a fortified wine and, therefore, quite alcoholic, it is a powerful and acquired taste when drunk neat – which is how it was served to my father.

Though it must have taken him at least forty eight hours to recover from such a chore, he did only have to endure it once a year. And there was always the pub next door to escape to.

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Musings on Christmas

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Nov 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »


It is November 21st and the preparations for Christmas are in full swing. Supermarket special offers vie with insurance companies for predominance in TV commercials.  Small children walking to nursery with their mothers can be heard singing “Jingle Bells” or “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” under their breath, though just loud enough to act, they think, as a subtle reminder to Mum.  The cable TV channel Movies 24, renamed Christmas 24 for the duration, is showing festive films throughout the day and night – with a two hour break between 6am and 8am for………….teleshopping! Christmas trees are also beginning to peer from behind curtains.

Much as I enjoy Christmas I have always tried to keep it at arms’ length, at least until the second week in December.  But the date upon which I am sucked into its tentacles has got earlier and earlier. I suppose Halloween now acts as the catalyst for a full scale assault on the holiday season, though the retail world, more desperate than ever to eke every penny out of customers grudgingly trying to resist such attempts, has been playing Christmas carols, Dean Martin, The Pogues and Kirsty McColl, not to mention that infernal Slade song, since mid-October.

So here I am – still a week of November to go and I am already wrapped up in Christmas (unlike the presents I haven’t even started to buy).

Unless we are devout Christians, and I certainly do not claim to be one, I suspect that our perceptions of the occasion vary over our lives.

My childhood Christmas mornings were spent opening the bulging sack of presents that my father, whom, out of loyalty, I had never exposed until now for his obvious mugging and impersonation of Santa, had lain at the bottom of my bed at between 1.30 and 2.00am (how do I know that when I was so obviously asleep at the time?).  At least I had the decency not to disturb my parents before 5am with the revelation of its contents.

After visiting several friends for drinks, we would walk to my paternal grandparents’ house for the traditional Christmas dinner, surrounded by assorted cousins, aunts and uncles, followed by party games, a “good old sing-song” and an elaborate tea comprising such Dickensian delicacies as pork pie and piccalilli.  Once the organisation of such a large event had become too much for them, their children rotated responsibility for accommodating fifteen, sometimes more, celebrants for three nights.  The women and children slept in the beds upstairs and the men sank onto any available floor space downstairs, where the evening’s drinking would be rounded off by the annual world farting championship (which a certain uncle won every year).  Joining the menfolk in this charming ritual became a rite of passage for the boys in the family.

Since leaving University thirty five years ago, the holiday season has, with the exceptions of one New Year in New York and a couple of years where bad weather grounded us, entailed a near six hundred mile round trip between the two events to ensure that both my and my girlfriend’s / wife’s parents were neither offended nor disappointed.  Inevitably, therefore, Christmases and New Years have taken on a familiar and staid pattern.  “Christmas is really for the kids” may be a cliché, but the presence of each succeeding generation of children does enliven the occasion and bring back warm memories of one’s own childhood.

But, in recent years, I have developed a growing affection for Christmas.  For a long time it was an enjoyable if routine experience, which the travelling did little to mollify.  Especially since my disenchantment with football, around which my Christmas diary had revolved, took hold, the lead up to the holiday season has become one long round of social events.

This year alone, I have already booked to see Cinderella, the first pantomime in the new Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury and English folk singer, Kate Rusby’s Christmas Concert at the Barbican Centre in London.  Both of these have become essential annual events.  In addition, we are attending the Christmas Evening Special at Hever Castle and Rochester’s annual Dickensian Christmas and linked German style Christmas market.  We may also be part of the congregation at the Rochester Cathedral Carol Service.  Several Christmas meals are also planned, and there will be the inevitable procession of  shopping excursions, including a visit to the new Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, close to the Olympic Stadium.

And then there’s the Christmas CDs which have been stuffed away in my wardrobe for the past eleven months.  They will need a dusting before my favourite songs are reloaded once again on my iPod to enable me to create the playlists that act as the soundtrack to the “big day”.

The DVD collection will also get an airing with assorted versions of A Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street being essential viewing.  Purporting to have a literary disposition, it might be expected that I would cite It’s A Wonderful Life as the ultimate Christmas movie, but I’m sorry to disappoint you – Bad Santa and Elf take pride of place in my collection!

Which brings me to a question that preoccupies me a lot these days – whether my shifting interests and attitudes on this subject, or any other for that matter, are, in any respect, attributable to the ageing process or not.  I have no idea what the answer is. My political views, musical tastes and sporting allegiances remain broadly the same as when I was younger, although they have been subject to some fine shading with the passage of time.  I dare say this phenomenon has attracted scientists who will have theories for it.  Perhaps it will, one day, be the subject of another blog post.

The connection to the Christian dimension of Christmas is a particularly interesting one.  Although I was brought up as a Church of England Christian, and was presented with a bible for 100% attendance at Sunday School when I was nine, any faith that my parents might have gently encouraged me to adopt, has long disappeared.  And I have never been one, unlike my father, to bellow out a carol or hymn – in fact I was only selected for the school choir and placed in the front row because I was a champion mimer.  But, long after those days in primary school when I would sit cross-legged singing (my talent for miming had not been discovered yet) Away in a Manger and Rocking, I remain genuinely touched by the music in particular.  It has the same emotional impact upon me as listening to a reading of the 400 year old King James version of the Bible. I am sure that I am far from alone in harbouring such contradictions.  

So I’m looking forward to Christmas – the social and theatrical events, my father round for dinner and, yes, the travelling to the in-laws for New Year.

But I will not be able to suppress an irritated groan when I hear that damned Slade record for the first time.

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