Oh Come All Ye (Un)Faithful...

Somewhat later than usual, I know, but from the depths (ie, at the bottom of the barrel) I have scraped up one last pre-Christmas column. I don't plan to be writing anything next week, as I confidently expect to be too busy playing with my Roll-A-Matic Daleks ("These are the crack-ers of Earth...") and I had feared that the same would be true of this week. At the last minute, however, we went to our local Church's Carol Concert this afternoon and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I was inspired there, I did at least think of something to ramble on about.

The reason we went to the Carol Service was not, I'm afraid, due to some Damascus Road experience while Christmas shopping yesterday (a near-death experience is probably more appropriate for going to a big city on the last Saturday before Christmas). To quote the first segment of "The Trial of a Timelord" (which I in fact watched early yesterday morning on UK Gold, how very neat) the reason is far more secular than that - namely that when volunteers for the 'Nativity Tableau' were asked for at the Primary School our stage-struck daughter eagerly signed up.

We weren't the only ones there under, religiously speaking, false pretences, so I can at least comfort my hypocrisy on that score. Quite the contrary in fact. The Church was literally full, not a spare pew to be had, and since I don't think it's much of a leap of, erm, faith to assume that this is not the case of a normal Sunday, one quickly realises that the place was mainly filled with parents, grandparents, siblings and friends of the various children who had been seconded to fulfil the roles of Mary, Joseph, Innkeeper (my personal favourite), Kings, Shepherds, and Angels. The last category was where my daughter came in. I hesitate to say "of course" because as well as the female lead it is certainly quite common nowadays to see female innkeepers, even female shepherds and kings. Er, queens, obviously... But no, an angel was what my daughter was, one of a set of six, not including yer actual Archangel Gabriel.

My daughter is not, let me be frank, noticeably religious, so I feel confident in saying that she was mainly in it for the frilly costume and the cardboard wings, rather than for any more noble cause. Similarly with the congregation (I just managed to stop myself typing 'audience' in the nick of time there). We were in the main only there in support of our various children and grandchildren, and I found myself wondering this afternoon, why this should be? Is it a cynical attempt on the part of the organisers of this annual event, to trick the guest Vicar into believing that the Church in our village is always this full? Is it driven by a dedicated sense of faith, hoping (and praying one assumes) that at least a small proportion of us heathen present this afternoon will find some sense of faith kindled in us, and come back again? Or is it (and this is, perhaps rather sadly, the most likely) just how it's always been done?

Because, let's make no bones about it, if you want a full Church the best way to get it is by having the kids involved. Parents will either want to go or will just feel obliged to, but either way they'll be there. In that sense children are the Church's Daleks - an automatic way of boosting the ratings. And although it must be, I would imagine, very uplifting and rewarding for the Church regulars (literally 'the faithful few' in this instance) to see and hear the place full, they must surely know in their heart of hearts that it isn't a sudden revivalist movement. To pursue the Doctor Who parallel, the extra millions who tune in to watch "Death to the Daleks" aren't in all honesty going to stick around for "The Monster of Peladon" are they?

My wife, and indeed my mother-in-law who was also there, never sing carols. I say never - we had the same service this time last year, so on the basis of those two occasions, they never (so far) sing carols. Rightly or wrongly, I love a bit of carol singing, me. Quite apart from the number of times we used to sing them at Primary School, we also used to sing them at Sunday School and Chapel when I was younger, so the sound of the popular Christmas carols has as much an association with the season for me as tinsel and turkey. I don't think my wife has such a connection - she sang them at School presumably, but not it seems to the same extent, and certainly not so much that they are in any way a part of Christmas for her.

To be fair, my beloved other half did make the point that she considers it hypocritical to be singing them if you don't believe in them. In one sense this is a very valid point, and indeed the fact that the rest of us did sing them could quite legitimately be levelled as a damning criticism. Even the Vicar this afternoon made the point that we are now so familiar with the Christmas carols that in many cases we don't register the words as such, we simply recite them by rote. She (my wife that is - this may be the 21st Century but I'm not sure Female Priests have really made many advances in rural Devon) and also the Vicar are both correct in what they say; the carols we sing were originally written as religious songs for the Christmas services, and the words, if you actually examine them, reflect this.

On the other hand, as I pointed out to my wife, she was quite happy to sing along to "Fairytale of New York" yesterday so unless she really does think that I'm an old slut on junk her argument is on somewhat shaky ground!

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Since it is all but Christmas, and more crucially since I seem to have a bit of space left, I thought I would add a little 'selection box' before I close. I will come back, albeit circuitously, to the above discussion on religion (ooh, controversial!) but before I do there are just a few snippets and oddments that I couldn't manage to fit in anywhere else and which, since they made me smile might possibly have some little merit. There is no 'point' to these, so pick what you like and leave the rest in the packet until the Aunts and Uncles come around on Boxing Day!

...My parents (as I have previously mentioned) are both Methodist Ministers. When Dad was the Minister in this area (the 1980s) there always seemed to be a bit of a 'snobbery' thing between the Church and the Methodists. No Holy War or anything like that, but if for example there was a combined service it seemed that the Anglican thinking was very much that they were doing things the right way and that the Methodists should just follow suit, rather than the other way around. On that basis it made me smile this afternoon when one of the readings in the Order of Service was announced as being read by 'a Methodist friend' - it didn't amuse me so much because that might well be an Anglican oxymoron, but more because the name wasn't given, perhaps in an attempt to protect the brave individual!!!

...Further to my earlier column about the lunacy of grown people starting conversations about Father Christmas, my wife has come up with a wonderful 'soundbite'. She was referring to my mother-in-law who gets very excited about Christmas, which is fine in itself but not so fine when she then keeps getting our daughter hyped up about it weeks in advance. My wife described her mother as being "a carrier - no danger to herself but a risk to others."! It made me laugh anyway, and I just wish she'd thought of it a couple of weeks earlier so that I could have put it in the relevant column and claimed it as my own idea!

...Another thing that struck me this afternoon was a recollection of my Primary School Headmaster. I will almost certainly be back to my Primary School in some future column as it was an important, and entertaining, period for me, but for now let me mention that I vividly remember our Headmaster rehearsing us for the School's Carol Concert, and telling us where to breathe. If there's a comma, he would say, then breathe - but if the sentence carries on from one line to the next sans comma then you carry on too, rather than stopping from breath. So in "Away in a Manger" (ironically my least favourite carol, but a good example) you would sing "Be near me, Lord Jesus: [breathe] I ask thee to stay/Close by me for ever [breathe again]" etc rather than "Be near me, Lord Jesus: I ask thee to stay [breathe] Close by me for ever..." If my old Head could have heard the various breathings-in at the ends of lines with no commas this afternoon, well, he would have been appalled I'm sure!!! Funny how these things come back to 'haunt' you isn't it...

...My daughter's school's Christmas extravaganza this year was on the evening of the first Friday in December. It was split into two halves, and I really won't bore you with the details of the show. But during the interval I suddenly had an image of all the Primary School kids out in the back room, belts undone, feet up on the desks, fagging away, saying things like, "Ooh, tough crowd"!

...And a third thing that I noticed this afternoon (gosh, what an inspiring service it was): never mind the furore (now proven groundless it seems) that had previously surrounded Mel Gibson's supposedly anti-semitic film on the life of Christ. This afternoon the little boy playing the (Jewish) innkeeper was only persuaded to let Joseph & Mary have the stable because Joseph offered to pay double. The dear little boy rubbed his hands in glee at the thought! Oy gewalt!

...And finally, every year I am amazed that some wily sweet manufacturer isn't selling a product called "Bah Humbugs" - they'd clean up with that!

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And finally, finally...

Whatever I may (or may not, as Douglas Adams might say) believe, I'm certainly not going to spend the remainder of this column picking holes in the Christmas story like I did with the Father Christmas myth a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure there are many inconsistencies or illogicalities (this afternoon we sang about the events of the birth of Christ taking place "amid the Winter's snow" which I'm quite sure wasn't the case in Palestine!) but that strikes me as not really being the point. When my Mum was taking her Preacher's exams, I recall one of the questions asking what the significance to her was (referring to Easter now, I should point out) of the stone being moved. The point I think, in a nutshell, was an exercise in 'thinking', in questioning assumptions - i.e., the stone being moved from the tomb is not in itself proof of a miracle. On a similar train of logic, the inconsistencies and even perhaps absurdities of some of the details of the 'popular' Christmas story aren't of themselves proof of a fabrication. Regardless of people's beliefs, it's at the very least clear that something happened in Bethlehem over two millennia ago, and the fact that (again, regardless of the individual belief in the matter) the name and the events are still remembered and marked today is surely indicative that it was something pretty important.

Anyway, I think it's time to call it a day there and wish anyone reading this a Merry Christmas. However you're celebrating it.

Ho ho ho.

And a Happy New Year.

22nd December 2003