Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "christmas"

The black sky was full of bright stars as we left our club's annual D.I.Y. Christmas party. It was a good start to 'Wintermas', which I have decided is what we are having this year; the period between the first Christmas event and the first birthday of the year in January. Last year the family Christmas get together in January was postponed by bad weather until my birthday in February.
However you choose to celebrate or ignore Christmas, most of us would agree it is over commercialised and over hyped by the media. 'Christmas Department' the last story in my new anthology 'Hallows and Heretics' (Amazon Kindle)takes a different look at Christmas shopping.
If do you want to keep a check on the days till Christmas, visit the Advent Calendar without chocolates in the prologue at my website www.ccsidewriter.co.uk

As a teenager I went with my family and a boyfriend to Winthrop Hall, University of Western Australia; we were there for a performance of the Messiah. The boyfriend had no idea what to expect and was totally stunned and thrilled; it was the first performance I had heard live and the work has never lost its magic for me.
For many people Messiah is an important part of Christmas and I have just been to a performance by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus. A wonderful evening; from the bloomingly pregnant soprano to the gorgeous counter tenor, all life was there.
During the Hallelujah Chorus the audience all stood. Whether you believe this tradition started because the King stood up to acknowledge a Being far greater than himself or because he had cramp in his leg; whether people stand from reverence, out of respect for a great composer, or because everyone else is, for one moment at Christmas people are united on a higher plane.

Sandscript goes Seasonal

It must be that time of year again, there’s a new documentary series on BBC2 about a cathedral, this time it’s Canterbury. Cathedra is just Latin for chair, the throne of a bishop and of course this is the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1,400 years of Christianity and the mother church of 85 million Anglicans worldwide.
And who can resist watching? If you like history, architecture, love people watching, or are a Christian of any denomination, all life is here. We started with the obligatory scene of sweet little choir boys at their boarding school, getting up very early for breakfast, then singing practice before school lessons. But Canterbury has another unique feature that makes it stand out from the other great cathedrals; here one of the most famous murders in history took place in 1170. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was slain by four of the knights of King Henry the second.
Cathedrals look as solid as stone, but no documentary is complete without scaffold and stone masons at work. Dramatically, but alas not caught on film, a piece of stone fell out of the great south window in 2009, narrowly missing a member of the public. A major project began, involving removing the stained glass window and rebuilding the whole window.
Back to people; equality was also a theme, women as clergy yes, but not yet allowed to be bishops at the time of filming. Women have always been stalwarts of the church, hard working vicar’s wives, cleaning rosters, feeding up young curates and creating the beautiful embroidery for altars and clergy. Equality is rarely straightforward. The weekly sewing group was mending the regalia ready for Christmas and the ladies twittered round a tall chap as he tried on his splendid robe.
One of the women said tersely ‘It’s not the same now there are women…we had to chop nine inches off the bottom…’
This is all about dressing up and who is more likely to impress processing down the long aisle, the six foot three man or a five foot nothing dumpy middle aged woman?
But there was the birth of the girl choir, equality? You can’t argue with biology; a choir of men and boys ranging from the tiniest boy with the voice of an angel to the finest bass who sends shivers down your spine, means they have never needed women or girls. The new girls are aged 12 to 18 years, a contrast to the boys 8 to 13 years. Nor do they have equal opportunities; they come from local schools and attend a weekly practice, not for them the scholarships and private education of the boys that can set them up in adult life with a musical or other career. But the girls were enjoying the new enterprise and will be a breath of fresh air, imagine the choir master trying to control sixteen giggling teenage girls.
Many of us are hypocrites; we will not go to the local quarter empty church to hear a few elderly ladies warbling. If we get the chance, we want to squeeze into a cathedral, admiring the ancient stone in flickering candlelight, taking in the centuries old scent of timber beams and incense, feeling the magnificent pipe organ reverberating. Or we will put our feet up and enjoy a carol service on television, with close ups of angelic, round mouthed choir boys.

You can see parts 2 and 3 of Canterbury Cathedral at 9pm on BBC2, Monday 15th December and Friday 19th December.

For a different view of cathedrals and pictures, visit my website.

http://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter...

There is only one event certain to happen during the Christmas season, the winter solstice; the December solstice is a moment that will occur at 10.44 GMT on December 21st this year. But for those of us who are not scientists it just means the shortest day; 7 hours 49 minutes and 41 seconds in Britain. While the shops are crowded with shoppers, others will flock to Stonehenge; the prehistoric monument is carefully aligned on a sight-line that points to the winter solstice sunset.
People were celebrating at this time of year long before some spin doctor had the brilliant idea of tacking Christmas on to Yueltide. Apart from the weather, Christmas is what we make it and after all the media and commercial hype, when Christmas Day finally arrives it is centred on the home, each family creates its own traditions.

For those of us who had a happy childhood Christmas remains in our memories as a time of heady excitement; dark winter days brightened with nativity plays, school parties and candlelit churches. There was one traumatic experience that dulled the excitement when I was seven. At school we were told to write a letter to Father Christmas, the girl sitting in front of me turned round and said ‘What’s the point of writing to Father Christmas when he doesn’t really exist?’ I tried to appear nonchalant, I was not going to admit my ignorance, but I was devastated. As soon as I got home from school I asked my mother if it was true; my last hopes were dashed and she swore me to secrecy, not to spoil it for my younger siblings. I soon recovered, the Christmas atmosphere remained and there was still the thrill of presents to unwrap.

When I was eleven we emigrated to Western Australia; our arrival was in October, we moved to our new house in December and my childhood Christmases disappeared forever. This was not the fault of Australia or my parents; I was growing up, the dark mystery of winter days was replaced by bright sunshine, we knew nobody, there were no gift bearing relatives visiting and my parents’ budget was tight. But by the following year Christmases were settling into a new pattern and we acquired family friends to celebrate with.

My first Christmas away from home, when I was nineteen, came about when my best friend and I planned a six week summer holiday trip across Australia, inveigling a mutual friend to share the driving and his car across the Nullabor Plain. She assured me her relatives in South Australia would be delighted to have the three of us for Christmas and indeed they were very welcoming. A collection of aunts and uncles had orchards and shops. On the first morning of our stay my two friends were commandeered to take one of the aunts to hospital with a miscarriage, I was left behind to look after her young children who I had never met before. More relatives arrived and unbeknown to us they had spotted a freezer that didn’t work properly in uncle’s shop, they warned each other not to eat the chicken. A very pleasant Christmas Day was followed by food poisoning on Boxing Day.

Events in our lives are marked by where we spend Christmas. When I was twenty I arrived at Heathrow Airport at six o’clock on Christmas morning, for a six month working holiday that stretched into infinity. The airport was huge and deserted, but by some miracle I found my way to the waiting relatives; back at their home I saw colour television for the first time.

Over the years there have been very different Christmases; in one town we had too much food with one family on Christmas Day, then a Boxing Day with the other family who didn’t appear to have any food in the house; we went out searching for food, but all the shops were shut. One year the longed for white Christmas arrived when we were staying in the countryside, we enjoyed ploughing across the fields and sitting by a blazing fire, but the rest of the house was freezing.

If you have access to children Christmas feels more real and we had a few years with four generations, though children are a risk as well, they are liable to be sick all over great aunt’s sofa.
Christmas is something to be ignored and got through for some people, while for others it brings enormous stress as they juggle extended families. But it would seem strange for the year to peter out devoid of any celebrations.

For writers Christmas provides plenty of plot possibilities.
My novel ‘Quarter Acre Block’ is inspired by our family’s experience. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quarter-Acre...
In the ‘Brief Encounters’ trilogy the characters enjoy three very different Christmases. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brief-Encoun...