Yesterday I got up early with an exciting day awaiting. A real outing! Ok it was only to Alfreton to a Diabetic Eye Screening, but so constrained is our social calendar that it merited a fresh Christmas Jumper, doing my hair and deodorant. A lot of trouble just to have something that felt like prussic acid poured into my eyes and to have my retina examined through something that reminded me of the underwater cameras Hans and Lotte Hass used to use to film the colourful fish of the Great Barrier Reef when all the colourful fish were black and white. Now of course the reef itself is reverting to black and white. But the evening was to have a less stinging climax.
In Thomas Hardy’s ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ the carol singers come to the house of Farmer Shiner where “a roaring voice exclaimed – ‘Shut up, woll’ee! Don’t make your blaring row here!’.....’Finish the carrel all who be friends of harmony, commanded Old William.” Farmer Shiner then proceeds to “utter enough invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition”....”.’Very onseemly – very!’ said Old William....And he a churchwarden!’”. The churchwarden writing this blog is infinitely appreciative of the old tradition of carol singing, even once giving 50p to a rather loutish youth who came to the door and whose repertoire was exhausted after two lines of Jingle Bells.
Yesterday at 6pm about a dozen of us gathered by the lights of candle lamps and to the aroma of mulled wine to sing carols at the behest of Radio Nottingham at the bottom of our drive. Such a cheer went up when Jill Neale levered her phone call in to the radio station and acclaimed the virtues of Crich across the county border. We couldn’t see anyone else down the Common, maybe they were involved in the Rams match which had caused Radio Derby to postpone the Carols on the Doorstep until 8pm. 8pm was far too late for us – it’s past the time when we can drink caffeine or eat cheese so we weren’t going to risk carols and mulled wine. So we sang our hearts out and showed that this Christmas, despite all the contrary forces, people are determined, by hook or by shepherd’s crook, by Zoom or by socially distanced outdoor in a public space carol singing in bubbles and groups not exceeding six excluding children under 11, to proclaim the joy of the season.
Anyone organising such events always encounters the pathological moaners, but cheerfulness, cooperation and community weigh in brighter and heavier in Crich. One of the battalion of epidemiologists being interviewed by the BBC yesterday challenged the interviewer to cover the huge majority of people who are obeying government guidance, rather than the minority who are flouting it. She indicated that this is a case where the media makes the news by making it look as if flouting government guidance is the norm, thus encouraging other people to follow suit. Today 37 huge hampers of Christmas food were delivered to local schools to distribute to some of our neighbours for whom 2020 has been particularly tough economically. The generosity of this community has been staggering, as it has been all year with the community pantries. To top it all cooked meals will be going out on Christmas Eve to some of our elderly folk and hampers of Christmas treats to some others. I suppose some people will say the state should be looking after those who are struggling. So it should, but giving and supporting others is what cements neighbourhoods together.
Now having co-ordinated and delivered the hampers Deirdre can turn her attention to a particular tradition which does not get feted as it deserves. Alas the grandchildren won’t be in our house this year to try and identify the enigmatic, arcane and impenetrable system by which she arranges our Christmas cards. It becomes a game of spot the themes. It could be glittery cards on the window sill, robins around the stove, landscape orientation on this string, portrait on this one, laminated paper here, nativities there, bells, humour, Santas, angels. Or could it be from nuclear family here, extended family there, old friends, new friends, late arrivals, people we don’t know who they are? One year we had no fewer than four bishops on the mantelpiece – where else would you put bishops?
Let’s celebrate seasonal quirks. And there are likely to be a lot of them this year: a carol Service where we can’t sing carols, charades in the garden or through the window, mince-pies eaten crumbling on a park bench
, barbecues by moonlight, party games by Zoom, King Herod amid the kale. Perhaps some will become traditions in themselves.
Perhaps just standing and wondering will become a tradition.
