The ghosts of Christmas Past

It's a strange phenomenon, the power of Christmas Eve to resurrect memories so strongly and yet so randomly. As I listened to the first of the closing voluntaries from the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's, there came into my mind a memory of myself, in my late teens, stricken with some inconvenient malady on Christmas Eve and spending that short afternoon in bed with the radio on, drifting in and out of sleep. I can't remember what ailed me, and cannot think it lasted, but at the time it felt unreal and solitary as the day darkened.

The small me in the photo (I think I was two) lived in blue dungarees and had to be coaxed out of them for family Christmas tea. (The yellow duck didn't join us - his red felt beak was too chewed for respectable company). We ate Christmas lunch, I remember clearly, in our top flat in Novar Drive, Hyndland, and went for tea to my grandparents' house in Hyndland Road. The whole extended family - the Stewarts, that is - would turn up there at some point in the day, though as I was the first of my generation I was the sole child for the first few post-war years. Families tended to live close, and there was public transport for those who were beyond walking distance.

I was remembering this morning how in my early married life I didn't do any Christmas food: my parents' house was ten minutes' walk from our flat (still in Hyndland) and we went there for lunch and stayed, stupefied, until it was time for bed. My first ever Christmas cake was made just before I had my first child - I'm sure I've recounted how, having slipped on ice in Clarence Drive, I had such a sore behind that I couldn't sit down, and dispelled my fears by baking. But the Glasgow Christmasses didn't end with our emigration to Dunoon; Cal Mac ferries seem to me to have run on Christmas Day and we headed back to Glasgow with our baby son. I do recall, however, that on the first year in Dunoon I iced the cake just before heading out to Midnight Mass: for the first time in my life I was attached to a church and had singing to do.

The long years of running Christmas myself occupied the greatest part of my life, having ended only five or six years ago. It still seems odd not to be making stuffing on Christmas Eve, and ramming it into a recalcitrant bird before church, odd not to waken to the smell of cooking and worry that the overnight temperature had been too high - or too low if the smell wasn't making it as far as the bedroom. There are no small children for whom stockings will have to be filled. I no longer have the restless wait for all the grown-up family to be safely here, nor the unholy rush between the end of term and the 25th. There is, theoretically, all the time in the world.

Time, in fact, to miss family; to look forward to seeing some and regret not seeing others; to have a suitcase packed and worry about taking the right things or forgetting presents or cooking brandy. Time to think about having dinner so that we can have a proper rest before our midnight sing/play/pray (have I got the intercessions? the music?) Time to wonder how we ever had the energy to drag sleeping choristers from their beds to come with us (really).

Now these choristers are cooking turkeys, looking after young children, preparing for visitors, in different parts of the country, and we are here, with the dark firth calm at last and the rain peppering the windows. Everything changes but the message of that distant birth. Even the carols - tonight our introit will be Advent Song, which is only four years old. And then Advent will be over, the waiting over.

And it will be Christmas.

Three snacks and out

I found myself, in a procrastinating moment, leafing through a leaflet from the Co-op, a Christmas leaflet promising all manner of festive treats that could readily be bought or whipped up using a range of Co-op products. I was lured to check out the helpful little labels at the foot of each recipe - you know, the ones with the 'traffic-light' system of grading content of fat, salt, sugar etc.

I suppose I was thinking of the disturbing news the other day that doctors no longer know what the average healthy weight of an 8-year old is because almost all children in Scotland are overweight or obese. It seems that the adult population is also heading for the buffers fully laden, as it were, and the NHS is doomed as a result. (Ok - I was sweeping a floor at the time and may have condensed this slightly, but you get my drift.)

One caller on the dreaded Call Kaye programme suggested labelling every instant meal with an example of the kind of exercise that would burn off the calories contained therein. I thought this a marvellous idea - it was the realisation that to rid myself of the calories of an average pizza I would have to climb a Munroe carrying a pack that had me decide that life was too short to eat pizza and would probably be shorter if I did.

Back to the leaflet. On average, the calories contained in the average helping of the snacks whose recipes looked so tempting - and these are one- or two-bite nibbles we're talking here - the average content was between 400 and 500 calories. Thats's appalling. The main culprits seemed to lie in the use of cream and butter, even on apparently healthful things like sprouts. Three of these snacks would constitute the recommended calorific average for someone of my age, build and height for a whole day unless I took some exercise. 

That's it, really. I'll probably eat a few such items over the gluttony season, leave my body to complain afterwards of the abuse, but not without thinking about it. I'm not miserable about that at all - any more than I am about cutting out, say, oysters from my diet (they have dire consequences for me). And I am reminded of something my father said when I was a skinny teen going to the cinema regularly and eating a bag of peanuts in the darkness. "That's enough to feed a starving family for a day."

He was ahead of his time, I think.

Lights in the darkness

..and more candles
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

All right - I'm late with a blog post on Christmas . Tough. I've not had a minute at my own proper computer till now, and I draw the line at blogging on my phone while entertaining a two-year-old - of which more, perhaps, anon. But now, after a restorative walk on the fringe of the forest with my pal, I want to remember what happened before the post-Christmas church takes over and moves us 12 years on before we've had the Magi yet.

For it was a splendid season, crowded but splendid. Having retained the Advent feel right up to the quiet Eucharist with the surprisingly large congregation on Advent 4, we had a full church again that afternoon for a Carol Service. Our choral group 8+1 sang, the children paraded up and down with camels, shepherds and random sheep, the mulled wine flowed and we all grew mellow and cheerful. And then, in the close proximity that had seemed so impossible in prospect - how to gear up again so soon? - we came back to church for Midnight Mass. The pic shows what we saw. And although we had to put the nave lights on because people might need to see words of carols and such, this is more or less what I saw throughout the service. There are benefits from sitting in the front row .... There were carols serious and carols frivolous: the former during communion, the latter during the serving of the cider cup (we're dead versatile when it comes to beverages). Mr B and I had our annual fun singing with our friends who happen to sing tenor and soprano. There was incense. And - joy - the crib was under the altar, and looked amazing. The starry backdrop paper was a final stroke of genius, and I recognised the packing straw from one of our presents ...

Rudolph takes tickets

And then .... Well, then we had the annual dash to Edinburgh on Christmas morning, on a ferry staffed by Santa and his crew, and the joy of a dinner cooked by the hand of another and the conflagration of the pudding cooked by mine. And the children were as high as kites and very amusing, and ... and ... and we forgot to take the remains of our cake home and had to go back for it, turning off the westbound M8 at Livingstone. Think another hour on the journey - worth it, I reckon.

Today, however, it's hard to realise that less than a week has passed since that magical night. And really this is what has fuelled this post. The anticipation, the emotion, the celebration - these are all features of birth itself, human birth in human homes. I feel sad for the people who have their houses decorated at the beginning of December, who have no concept of Advent, of waiting, and who then tear down their lights and throw out their trees and say thank heavens that's over before it's even New Year's day. I can't help wondering how they'd see it if their standard response were to be applied to the birth of a child in their family. Picture it:

Four weeks before the baby is born, the family start decorating the house with all manner of lights, greenery and so on. The pregnant mother helps a bit, but her mind is, understandably, on other things. Occasionally there are drunken parties, all themed around the approaching birth. On the night of the birth itself, the family assemble, fight a bit. Next day they have a massive party, eat themselves sick and drink themselves into oblivion. But three days later, when the mother brings the baby home, she finds that the house is bare, tidy but bleak, and everyone has gone home. There are no more celebrations, no sense of joy. As far as everyone's concerned, it's all over until the next baby - or something.

Silly, isn't it. But some of us have only really been celebrating for less than a week, and we're still really happy about remembering what happened and demonstrating that happiness. Because what we are celebrating changed everything, just the way the birth of a new baby changes everything. And you can't put change back in the loft till next year.

Glass baubles and messages

Glass bauble
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I was remarking with friends last night how traditional my style of Christmas tree is. We sat, side by side on the sofa, mellow with drink and food, and stared at it: multi-coloured lights, random decorations from the past 40 years, and fragile glass baubles, eight of them, which have miraculously survived their annual trip down the loft ladder and back, as well as two flittings. My memories had been further jogged by the sight of the Downton Abbey tree, dripping with lametta - I remember that my father always insisted that there had to be a generous quantity of lametta or it just looked silly, and who was I to demur? It's many years since I used these silver strips to hang from the tips of the branches (a third of its length to be draped over, the rest to dangle), but I replaced my forty-year-old multicoloured Pifco lights only last year (they had died in their box) and they in turn had been my attempt to replicate the inch-long pointed coloured bulbs of my parent's lights.

Of course, I've been on about all this before, as several of the links above will lead the diligent new reader to discover. But last night the brain wandered off somewhere, and lo: there were other memories. Like being sent for the messages. What age was I, for example, when I had to go for potatoes by myself? Maybe six, seven? I remember being given the brown leather shopping bag, with a folded newspaper inside. Don't forget to get the paper put under the potatoes to keep the bag clean. And off I went, up Novar Drive to the top, to the grocer's shop in what we called "Wee Hyndland", the row of shops opposite St Brides Episcopal Church and Hyndland Parish Church in all their red sandstone splendour. There were no roads to be crossed - presumably it was thought a safe errand. It was, however, terrifying. First I had to make myself seen in the queue of adults - women, natch - and hand my bag over to a large man with a bald head and a blue apron. It was all very well for my mother to direct him what to do with the newspaper, but words failed me and I watched despairing as he shot a shiny scale-pan of earthy potatoes - could it have been half a stone? a quarter stone? - into the bag in which I could see the still-folded paper reposing uselessly down one side.

I think I got a row for that, and I know I suffered mass disapprobation on the day when, for some unfathomable reason, I was sent to collect the newspapers for all the houses in 66 Novar Drive. It was a windy day. Much of the "pavement" was a muddy sidewalk beside allotments (plots?). People didn't like their mud-spattered, randomly-ordered newspapers. But I think I was maybe five at the time, and looking back I think there was either lunacy or child-abuse at work.

Amazing, isn't it, what can come to mind under the stimulus of a drop of champagne and the peeling of some King Edwards?

That's Christmas for you ...

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe ...

The kitchen is warm. No - it is actually unbearably hot. The erstwhile poet/musician, transformed for the nonce into Domestic Goddess, is hard at work. The oven is purring, for she has begun the day by roasting beetroot. There are still ominously red drips splattered over the white sink, as if Lady Macbeth had been washing her hands there, and sticky red blobs show where the cranberry sauce was poured, splashily, like a fine wine, into the warmed jars. (The DG was unhappy with the first batch, the cranberries having been over-long in the freezer, and has ditched it and made another lot.)

The heat is loaded with smells, individually rather wonderful, but together somewhat worrying. The burbling from the cooker-top indicates that it is time for the spiced prunes to come off the heat - star anise, honey smells - and it is time to find the preserving pan. Why, in the name of Christmas, the preserving pan? Well, the DG is very fussy about marmalade, and has just opened the last jar ... Ok, she uses tinned oranges, but there are a couple of red grapefruit to chop up (red again, and sticky) and careful calculations to be made about quantities of water, sugar ...

Why does she never write these things down? Why, indeed, did she not make the marmalade last week? Well may you ask. Could be the same penchant for distraction that has Mr B the musician back at the piano tinkering with an arrangement (don't ask) instead of getting to the church while it's still daylight for a spot of practice. He has already seduced the DG into running through a particularly challenging alto line (Tavener) for Midnight Mass - the other two singers are turning up tomorrow for the (only) rehearsal.

The DG finds herself thinking of Monty Python, as she shrieks at Mr B, currently in full composer/arranger/performer mode. 'Get up to the church!' (He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!) She tests the marmalade, which seems to wrinkle in a satisfactory fashion, slops it into more warmed jars, screws on the tops and leaves them to cool before attempting to wipe off the sticky bits. (More stickiness ...) The preserving pan is incandescent, and defiantly sticky. She fills it with hot suds and leaves it on the stove for when she feels stronger ... Oh God. The brandy butter ...

A friend asked me this morning how it came about that I felt I had so much to do when I was going away on Christmas Day. Quite apart from the fact that all I'm not cooking is the main course - and I always did that with a glass of champagne in my hand - I think part of the trouble is that just right now my head is full of poetry and music and I want to write and sing and .... and ....

Maybe I really need to be a student again. And 45 years younger.

But then I might have nothing to say.

Traditional and effective

The photo accompanying this post records one of these satisfying grandmother moments. I'd been holding Anna (4 weeks old) in the hope that she would drift off to sleep, but she didn't appear to be able to settle. Perhaps her sister was too interesting, or she just didn't want to miss out, but she was tired and scratchy and it was obviously time for the Wise Woman to make a reappearance - and sing.

I've written of this before, when I was singing to that lively three-year-old in the background (can't help feeling it wouldn't work now, but I'll return to that). This time I sang another lullaby, Watts' Cradle Song, to an American (I think) tune arranged by Mr B for our women's choir, 8+1. The melody is in the alto range, and I've had it on the brain for the past few weeks. The words were somewhat random , as I'm hopeless at remembering them, but phrases like "here's no ox about thy bed" seemed suitably soothing, and after gazing intently at me as I sang, Anna's eyes drooped and in no time at all she was sound asleep. She was sitting in this upright position, too, so the sense of communication was very real - until she flopped. I continued singing quietly as I put her to bed, and that was that.

I can't stress how important I think this live singing is for young children. It's not the same when nursery rhymes, lullabies and so on are played on CDs or - worse - distorted by electronic toys. The vibration, the tailoring of volume to the moment, the possibility for variety - these all contribute to what is, after all, as old as the hills.

Incidentally, big sister still loves to sing - though she does give me a row for using the traditional words as the end of Mary had a baby. You can't please all the people all of the time ...

Another fold

This cloud - taken from tags in this blog, using Tagxedo, has nothing to do with what I'm thinking, other than that I should be doing something else, like wrapping presents ... but it's fun, and only took a few moments ...

But I was thinking, yet again, of the way time crumples when you undertake annual tasks. Stir-up Sunday, familiar to generations of Anglicans as the day when the collect for the day reminded them that it was high time to stir up their puddings and such for Christmas, may have morphed into the feast of Christ the King, with the collect only mentioned before the service in case any of us was relying on it, but my fruit has been soaking in booze for a week and now the cake is in the oven. Two years ago I wrote a poem about the same sense of a folding in time, when the intervening years vanish in the routine (lining the cake tin - still the same palaver) and smells of cake-making.

Today I was recalling the first time I baked my own cake, instead of going back to sample my mother's cake and perhaps purloin some for our own house. I was on maternity leave, it was cold, and I had slipped on the frosty pavement in Clarence Drive, having gone to the shops before the sun reached that spot. At that time a good stone over my usual weight (I'd think nothing of it now - darn!) I came down with a crash on my rear end. Panic and pain. Would the baby be all right? (yes - still is, as far as I know) Had I cracked my coccyx? (probably, but nothing was done about it). Whatever long-term problems might arise, it was too sore to sit down that afternoon, so to take my mind off the pain and the angst I baked a Christmas cake.

Actually, the memory makes it sound more spontaneous than it must've been; I recall I had planned things, had been given a recipe by a friend whose cake I'd enjoyed, so I must have had the fruit soaking and needed only the impetus to turn it into something. That self-same cake from the self-same recipe is now in the oven, about to have its hat put on and the temperature lowered. Before I go to bed I shall pour the fruity left-over booze over it and wrap it up carefully, and another year will begin (I'm kinda governed by the liturgical, I fear). Perhaps the child who did not suffer from the fall will phone. Life will stagger on.

And then there are puddings to turn to ...

What am I listening to?

I don't tend to listen to any particular music more than once in any given time unless I'm learning it: in a house full of live music and CDs and Radio 3 there seems not enough time in any life to go over and over the one piece. I suppose that's why I tend not to listen to music on my iPod - talking books or poetry seem more appealing. But after joining briefly in Kelvin's little chat about the perceived boredom factor of the King's College carol service, I found myself arrested by a lovely piece of music in a great performance and thinking: This is what I am listening to, right now, and it's special.

"This" was a piece of choral music, Nesciens Mater, by Jean Mouton. His real name was apparently Jean de Holluige, and scholars have yet to discover why he was known as "Mouton", but he was born in the Pas de Calais before 1459 and rose to become court composer to the French kings Louis XII and Francis I. The motet I was hearing is based partly on plainsong melodies, distributed among eight voices in an elaborate canon - but that's not what you hear. Instead the music transcends its mathematically precise construction to create a wonderfully spiritual, contemplative meditation on the Virgin Birth - magical, really. And the performance, by the Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardner, was perfect.

And that brings me back to what I was trying to say about the King's service. Ok, I made the point that every time they sing this service there is someone coming to it for the first time - look here for this year's example of discovery - and it is good that what they hear should be flawless. But is it necessary to assume that the perfection born of months of practice and disciplined learning is boring? Boring for whom? Maybe those of us who grew up with Carols for Choirs may indeed feel we don't want to sing the Willcocks descant to "O Come all ye Faithful" again - but you try singing another one and you'll soon realise, if you're musical enough, why the Willcocks has survived so long.

I hinted a couple of posts ago that the magic does go out of some of the familiar seasonal rituals as we grow older. It's be a bit sad if it didn't. But I don't think we should equate our need to provide what we see as new and exciting with the need of others to experience it - expecially at Christmas. Now, go and find that BBC record* with the Jean Mouton on it, and forget everything else.

*BBC Music Magazine Collection, Vol.16 No.4: Christmas Choral Music

A different kind of Christmas

Assembly ...
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

A rather different Christmas, that was - but captured in one of its best moments by the pic accompanying this post, which shows Mr B putting the final touches to a very pink doll's cradle, the recipient of which waits eagerly, doll at the ready. And for me this was always going to be the biggest difference: my first Christmas Day away from home since the year before the daddy of the cradle recipient was born. So farewell, Domestic Goddess, and welcome, leisured guest who spent a great deal of time playing with toys or spread somnolently on the sofa. And d'you know something? It was great.

But there are other memories. The triumphant sense of having helped to make the midnight mass happen, and the joy of singing with a skilled group before and during it, making up in some ways for the cancelled carol service. "Bethlehem Down" is quite tricky by candlelight - even if you do cheat with tiny LED lights. The huge delight of seeing both my grandchildren - to say nothing of their parents - together on Boxing Day, and managing to get photos of them sitting like angels before we ate (again). The relief of journeys safely completed and of knowing the London contingent made it home in one piece.

And there were other firsts. I can't recall when the weather was quite so adverse at this time of the year, making motorway driving as slow as single track road traffic and outings to Asda as perilous as the Rock Fall on Everest. (note hyperbole here). And I haven't spent time in hospital on Christmas Day before, and have nothing but praise for the people who chose to work in Edinburgh Royal on that day and exuded reassurance, pain relief and the exhortation to have some turkey and that glass of Rioja when I got back to the house. (I recovered. I slept a lot)

And where did the message of Christmas come in? I suspect in that last paragraph, actually, for the people who don't focus entirely on church and home but make it possible for others to do so are cheery treasures. As I get older, I realise the futility of trying to hold onto the thrill I felt as a child, the wonder I found as a student in the singing of carols I'd only heard on the radio and could now perform well, the excitement of your own family Christmas as stockings were filled and hung and presents piled beneath the tree. This year we opened our own presents at 2am over a glass of malt, and the rest as part of the excitement of another generation. And that's as it should be. I'm not going to manufacture something that's passing.

Instead, I'm going to enjoy the image created by Fr. Hugh in his midnight sermon, of the Christ Child elbowing aside the ox and the ass of greed and selfishness - an image which had me chuckling at the thought of an infant as muscular and determined as my grandson Alan. It's an image which doesn't depend on ritual or appropriate footwear and which I can carry with me into any future Christmas season. It also gives a better meaning to the platitudinous "Christmas is for children" - for in a sense it is, and for the child in all of us.

So Happy Christmas, children, whatever your age!

A fold in time

Really far too tired to blog this, but the moment will pass otherwise... Today's concert, Words & Music for Christmas, was an old formula that we devised some 25 years ago for the choir we had started when we came to Dunoon. The Hesperians was a mixed voice choir, about 15 voices strong, and when we began our Christmas events, always on the third Sunday in Advent, we packed the venue, with people up in the balcony that even then we suspected as being precarious. In 1996 we gave our final such concert and the choir ceased to exist, having run out of tenors.

This year the choir that is really the child of the Hesperians revived the format, and, in a folding of time, that was what we were involved in this afternoon. 8+1 is a female voice group - 8 women, 1 man (Mr B, the MD) - and for today we were augmented by a second bass to sing SATB pieces. The second altos have developed into convincing tenors, and the sound was magical in places; we also sang several pieces arranged for female voices. We actually achieved a sufficiently high standard to put a smile on Mr B's face - not a rueful grimace in sight today!

But the audience reflected the fact that there are so many more carol events in Dunoon these days. Gone the time when we were the only show of this type in town - and gone the children, our children, sitting solemnly in the front row with their grandparents, also long gone. We are the grandparents now - and our grandchildren are far away and probably don't realise that their grandparents don't know their place and are still up there performing. I kept looking up expecting to see feet swinging at the ends of legs too short to reach the floor, and seeing only a sea of grey heads.

But the adrenaline of performance still works its rejuvenating magic, even if we collapse in exhaustion afterwards, and the particular thrill of hearing our own work - Mr B's arrangements; a couple of my poems - performed in public is not easily beaten. The hall may be on the verge of demolition, the balcony long out of bounds because of rot; the choristers may suddenly have become 13 years older without really noticing - but today we performed our socks off, and showed how it can be done.

And if you've never heard The Christ Child's Lullaby arranged for solo voices (Gaelic and English), four part choir, piano and solo cello - you've missed yourself. 'Nuff said.

Of stables and camels and life-saving surgery

Camel's eye view..
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I always associated churchy women with "doing the flowers" - and in my non-church days I vowed I would never be a churchy woman. There's an irony there, but I still don't "do" flowers. In fact, so far am I from this activity that when lovely people gave me flowers when I was ill on one occasion, my heart sank at the thought of having to disport them suitably in a pleasing receptacle.

However, Christmas allows for more varied decorating options. You've already noted the How To Make an Advent Wreath post, but have yet to learn of the possibilities of setting up the stable and its associated figures, one of which you can see in the foreground of this photo. The following should give you an idea:

A couple of days before the decorating is to occur, we ascertain from an animal-friendly member of the flock that we will have access to some hay: straw is rejected as being somewhat coarse. When we arrive at the church fifteen minutes late, we discover not only the hay but a custom-made cover for the tatty card tables on which will repose our tableau, and sigh with relief that we will no longer have to wrestle with the unwieldy brocade curtains which at one time, long, long ago, used to hang behind the altar. We ascend the tower, avoiding breaking a limb by skiting on the wet stairs; it has been seasonably wet and the tower is dripping with water. There, in the ringing chamber, there is a large wooden chest - large enough for a sizeable body, should anyone need to dispose of one. We fling back the lid and reveal the bubble-wrapped figures for Christmas and Easter. We begin to rummage.

There is confusion at first. Is the blue-clad old gent Joseph? No; he's St Peter, running at Easter. Put him back. Joseph is splendid in purple and an acid yellow, and is considerably younger. We abandon the Epiphany Mary in the search for the kneeling one - we shall regret not having the former to hand in a couple of weeks. The Wise Men are located, including the wonderfully Oriental-looking one. I recall how, some 30 years ago, an American lady called Verna who had done a course in cake decoration took all the figures away and repainted them in vivid colours; she insisted on giving Mary a wedding ring and somehow we've never got round to changing anything since.

The youngest shepherd boy has lost his head. Literally - we find it reposing in his bubble wrap, despite which protection all the plaster figures feel slightly soggy. Someone has brought a glue gun - the amazing Sharon who thinks of everything - and Di soon performs surgery. The shepherd boy looks just a little like Frankenstein's monster, but the scar won't show by candlelight.

The stable, also soggy, fits together first go and soon we have the donkey and the cow peering in and the figures in place. A candle which seems unlikely to ignite the hay is located and inserted in front of the crib. It is time to deal with the Magi. They are disported around the rim of the pulpit, which this year we have made more picturesque by totally removing the lectern. Some argument ensues as to whether they should be facing the star - a wonderfully vulgar illuminated job which hangs on a nail on the pulpit door and is connected to the same set of electric adaptors as the organist. We decide that one camel should have its backside facing the congregation, but that perhaps the kneeling figure should not go immediately behind it.

A couple of rhododendron branches stuck, appropriately, in a lump of Oasis and mounted on a tower of table and stool create a suitably palm-tree-esque backdrop and we are finished. There is always the danger that over-enthusiastic thunderings on the organ might bring the entire procession down on the organist's head, but it hasn't happened yet. Below us, the work continues - you can just make out in the photo the blur of movement that is the Rector - but our particular bit of creation is over.

And in case you wondered: no-one has preached from the pulpit in this century, thereby leaving it free for much more entertaining use.

Alternative Christmas?

I've been reading Kimberly's take on how ordination changes, among other things, the whole business of Christmas for the ordained. But I'd already been thinking along these lines, for it is not only the ordained who have to fit in the baking, the tree-decoration, the card-writing around other, more pressing activities. In fact, I must have been barely an adult when a totally carefree approach to the season vanished, to be replaced by the situation on which I touched in yesterday's post.

About ten years before I became involved with the church, I started singing in choirs which "did" Christmas. I met Mr B while singing in an a cappella octet which "did", inter alia, Christmas. Christmas occurs in - you've got it - midwinter. The height of the colds/flu/lost voice/wvv season. Suddenly a night out on the town - for in these days I lived in Glasgow - was a dangerous pastime. Who knows what bugs you might meet in a steamy pub? And if you had a duty to the other singers not to let them down ... you get the picture.

And then you find yourself, a singer who likes singing in small groups, married to a singer who is also a church organist. You bear children - and they become choristers. So as well as singing and cooking and being Santa you also end up laundering surplices and ironing ruffs while the organist is away catching his death in the freezing church as he practises or wrestling over an order of service with the incumbent of the day - and, dear reader, we have seen a few of them in our time. The angst is commensurably greater, though you are too busy actually to notice till it's all over.

I've just been chatting to one of our choir from yesterday who is going to her family for Chrismas Day. She won't be cooking, and her daughter-in-law will be doing the domestics. I wondered, fleetingly, if this would ever be our lot. But even as I wondered I knew the answer. For there is a wonderful reward in this church musician caper, in doing your very best to create something beautiful to enhance worship. I don't know what kind of shelf life we have, as singers, but I know full well that my life as Temporary Domestic Goddess will be hugely enriched by the contrast with what has gone before, and right now I can't imagine removing the organist from his home patch over Christmas.

Tomorrow I shall doubtless be laying hay in the manger and rescuing the Holy Family from the big chest in the damp tower, but before that - like now, this minute - I must ice my Christmas cake.

Randomly festive thoughts

Still beset by various carolling earworms, it came to me that I should try to find out what Christmas carol would be the desert island choice of the blethers readership. If you're still reading other people's blogs rather than trying to get your cards sent or your pressies wrapped, please tell.

On a tenuously related tack, I am happy to announce that my 38-year-old fairy lights (Pifco, little coloured bells, no flashing) lit up beautifully in their box today when we got them down from the loft. I thought a test advisable before Woolworths empties its shelves altogether. Spare bulbs are no longer sold, and I've used the last of the batch I bought maybe ten years ago. The lights are probably wildly unsafe and meet no modern criteria, but I like to hope they will see me out (not in a lethal way, you understand)

And finally, by way of greeting and to waste even more of your precious time, a festive link for you all.

Old-fashioned friendship

More cards today. And of course a mountain of them when we arrived home the other night after our trip south. I find myself as always looking at the handwritten envelopes and recognising the writing - for not many of our friends have done as I have in the past few years and used a database and labels. Some of these friends I haven't seen for at least 35 years, and it amuses me to picture them still writing as they did all those years ago. One in particular sat next to me in several classes at school and I used to despair at the unvarying neatness of her writing under pressure: it is unvarying still. I can't imagine how she looks now; we don't exchange photos and we're not connected online, but this annual renewing of friendship still has the power to please.

I sometimes feel a pang of guilt at the ease of using the printed labels, but reassure myself with the thought that I write the cards and think of the recipient and scribble in a word or two of friend-specific news or comment. It's as if they exist in a different plane from the people I know in this medium, the ones to whom I shall Tweet my seasonal wishes and who make Santa hats for my avatar to wear, the ones whose every move is familiar to me but who only know me as Mrs B.

I shall be posting on love blooms bright again tomorrow; there's some more lovely stuff there to meditate on in a quiet moment.

Angel!

Angel
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

What a terrific atmosphere we had in church this Christmas morning! I personally love the Midnight Mass, the darkness, the candles, the incense - but this morning, with the sunlight outside dimming the candle-flames, was the most perfect Christmas morning service I've attended in years. Why? Because we had half our family, including our baby granddaughter, with us. The effect on the otherwise elderly congregation was wonderful - not least because Catriona was at her most captivating and barely made a cheep throughout the entire proceedings.

I suspect there was a fair amount of substitution going on as we sang of babes in the manger, tender infants and so on - it was hard not to think we were singing of the baby in our midst. But maybe we were right. There was a real sense in which the miracle of the Incarnation was underlined by this smiling child who gazed at us as we sang, gurgled happily at the candles, and snored quietly during the sermon - and by the palpable happiness in the church and the warmth of the smiles of friend and stranger.

Happy Christmas!

Present joys

I've been tidying (just a little) before I put the Domestic G. disguise away for another year. Having assembled a neat pile of presents, I thought I'd post a pic of a few which are going to give me sustained pleasure (to distinguish them from the more instant gratification of edible/quaffable gifts, some of which are already gone forever..)

The sultry cleric in the background is on the cover of the wonderful Calendario Romano, full of pin-ups for collectors of dog-collars, a present from Mary who knows me too well. The photo album is a collection of wedding pics from the summer, taken from the vast number Flickred of the occasion - thanks to all who took them! The books? The new R.S.Thomas biography, "The Man who went into the West", Richard Holloway's "How to read the Bible", Andrew O'Hagan's novel "Be Near Me" and "Landmarks:an Ignatian Journey" by Margaret Silf. I shall perhaps blog about these when I've read them.

You will also notice the boxed set of DVDs of the wonderful "Rome" soap which I desired after seeing it last year, and a pair of amazingly comfy earphones for my iPod: I have tiny ears which complain hotly if I try to force the usual ones to stay in safely. These little beauties are Sennheisers, which cut out a great deal of noise and have graded rubber adjuster rings so that you can have different-sized ear-holes and still use them!

And the mask? A lovely Venetian one for when I've been drinking too much, perhaps ...really very flattering.

Bird of dawning

Every year around 10pm on Christmas Eve I think I won't survive the combination of cooking and church, and every year the delight of it all takes over. Last night, Mr B and I stuffed the turkey - rescued from the shed, where it had reposed since Saturday, there being no room in the fridge - and headed out to Midnight Mass. The church was lit entirely by candles apart from the red overhead heaters, and seemed to be full of young people - all former pupils - back home for the holiday. The holy smoke was the best I've seen in years, and the coughers surpassed themselves.The excellent innovation of sherry at the back of the church afterwards soon sorted them out.

Here's another wee quotation for the virtual mars bar hunters:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:

Last night I finally went to bed at 3am, and outside my window a bird was singing - not the neurotic oyster-catchers down on the shore, where the lights on the promenade confuse the poor things into squeaking all night, but a real, singing bird whose song continued until I was past listening. Coincidence?

Brilliant anyway.

Descrooged!

After my Scrooge-like grumblings about badly-behaved weans and pathetic parents, I have to redress the balance by reporting that in our church this morning there were four children, visiting their grandma, of whose presence I knew only because I'd seen them on the way in. Two wee boys and a six year old girl behaved impeccably throughout and then joined in with a will as the entire congregation set about decorating the Advent-bare church for Christmas.

This relatively minor incident made me hopeful once more - hopeful that there are still parents who can bring up their children to behave appropriately in whatever situation they may find themselves. I don't even need to grump at David about it!

Yule Tide maunderings

Well well. Seems we poor bloggers have been banned by Argyll and Bute because we use Blogger. Apparently the reason given is "sex". I have a sneaking feeling that perhaps iGear can't spell - it could be the "...gger" bit that gets the cyber-masters hot under the collar, or wherever else they feel the heat. Never mind. Presumably someone out there will continue to look in from time to time.

I do hope so, because I've just published a new poem over at frankenstina. It arose from that chilly visit to Edinburgh last week, and is dedicated to my pals Marilyn and Fraser. (Forgot to put that in the title - shall rectify some day!)

In the meantime, if you haven't received a card from The Blethers please blame my computer problems - my address list is in a label page file and the system flipped just before I printed them off. On this Yule Day (apparently it's today) I wish all non-Christians a Happy Yule , and the rest of you a happy and blessed Christmas.