Hope for Christmas

24 December, 2012 (13:41) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

It would be easy for this festive season to be very unfestive.

For example, I wonder why scientists are bothering to drill deep below the Antarctic to discover whether primitive life forms can survive under water with no sight of the sun. They should have come to Cornwall.

Outside, the road is once again in the river and what used to be a pretty garden is no more. I cannot see any way that the lower part will ever recover from this, though I suppose it’s possible.

Many, many more have it far, far worse of course, and therefore I’m not complaining. After all, now the lawn has been replaced by muddy swamp, there’s less grass to cut. Every cloud, etc.

But for many, this weather is not a thing of idle or casual chat any more, it’s an object of fear. Many will tell us there’s nothing we can do about it as there’s no such thing as man-made global climate change, so I suppose we must all sit back and continue to build on flood plains, continue to tarmac over the fields to speed water run-off. Etc. Cows must continue to fart – though we could all eat less burgers, maybe, and therefore reduce the need for quite so many farting bovines – and fossil fuels will discharge into the atmosphere, causing no harm.

I just hope somebody’s issued Santa with one of those anti-pollution facemasks and a stout brolly for this year’s run.

Meanwhile, are there any words of contempt graphic enough for the redneck scum panic-buying assault weapons in American gun stores in the wake of the school massacre?

The cretins are apparently terrified that somewhere in America there is somebody with a single brain cell remaining, who will have the wit to try to introduce some measure of control over whether people so stupid they chew on big Macs, vote for Mitt Romney and believe their god is a god of hate should be allowed to own items that can deal death.

Apparently the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And if the bad guy shoots the good guy, what you need is another good guy. Who’ll stay good. Good, presumably, meaning a god-fearing white American who hates communists and gays and pro-abortionists and environmentalists. Bad, presumably, meaning all of the above. Well, those are sound judgments.

Talking of rednecks, I see the favourite newspaper of the British version, the Daily Mail, offers us festive cheer with this Christmas Eve headline on its internet home page: “We’re on our way to Britain: a year from now up to 29m Bulgarians and Romanians will have the right to settle in Britain and claim benefits. And these gypsies in the slums of Sofia can hardly wait…”

Now, for somebody who occasionally tries to write satirical sketches, this sort of thing is a Christmas bombshell because it’s impossible – absolutely impossible – to satirise. When something caricatures itself to beyond pinpoint accuracy, my typing fingers may as well be fed to the ravening Bulgarian gypsy dogs I can see scavenging in the lane outside while their feckless owners rape our cars and steal our grannies.

Meanwhile, the police have joined the BBC by being in crisis. This is because the media is unable to deal with the idea of a single mistake or a single rotten apple; any such issue must, has to be, really really must by law be an institutional crisis. Therefore, the fact that a copper may have tried to paint Andrew Mitchell in a worse light than he already was is cue for another bout of extremely boring navel-gazing.

Well look. Fiddlesticks to all this festive misery. I’m going to the pub to be happy later, and tomorrow I shall be merry and damn the world. It may take a couple of bottles of red, but so be it.

Today is Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve I read an MR James ghost story and listen to choral music; I think of the Christmas truce in the World War One trenches; I treasure the childhood memory of snuggling tight and warm in my little bed, listening for the sound of sleigh bells; I think – in a happy way, not a sad way – of family and friends I will not see by the lights of a twinkling tree again, especially so this year. And each Christmas Eve I turn to another allegedly miserable old git for a warm festive thought:

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

by the embers in hearthside ease.

 

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

they dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

 

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years. Yet, I feel,

if someone said on Christmas Eve

“Come; see the oxen kneel

 

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know”,

I should go with him in the gloom

Hoping it might be so.

That’s Thomas Hardy’s The Oxen, and a poem about a folk tale I was told by my countryside grandparents when I was young: the belief that beasts kneel in their byres at midnight on Christmas Eve in salute of the coming of Christ. A hundred years on, and who wouldn’t hope good things may still be so? In this foul world, I too would go in the gloom, but do you know what? I wouldn’t look in the byre. Hope will do me this year.

Thank you all for sticking with this little corner of the internet for another calendar year. I enjoy it far more than the old newspaper days, I must say, free of constraints and refreshed by the laughter and the comments from you all. I’m grateful to everybody who takes part, truly I am.

A very merry Christmas to you all.

 

Comments

Comment from Old Fiddle
Time December 26, 2012 at 5:38 pm

Almost had a tear in me eye when reading this. Probably caused by the pain in my shoulder and lower back… and, of course, the coughing. Won’t happen now: I’ve just cooked Christmas dinner for seven while downing Rich’s farmhouse cider, followed by most of a bottle of Benjamin Darnault’s A.O.P Languedoc organic red wine, preceded by some home made Christmas pudding from Coads Green Farmers’ market, doused in brandy and with brandy butter and Cornish clotted cream: a pudding to die for. So if I don’t see you….

Comment from hamster
Time December 26, 2012 at 10:05 pm

This weeks Hamster Top Tip – to save a few pennies I recycled this weeks newspapers as wrapping paper. Mrs H said I was tighter than a submarine door and it wasn’t festive in anyway, but I pointed that Holly and Ivy were on page 3, but looking back now, that didn’t help much either.

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