Archive: Jan 9, 2015, 12:00 AM
The Spirit of Christmas
The trouble with Christmas is that it reminds me of all the people who are not going to enjoy it: Alistair Cooke, the sacked England cricket-captain; a friend recently diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease; North Sea oil-workers facing unemployment; Syrian refugees; Christians in Iranian jails; the victims of ancient hatreds in the country of Jesus’ birth.
Yet there is still the magic of it. It’s been a couple of years since I last hanged my stocking, modern Christmas-puddings no longer contain threepenny-bits, I can’t see much hope of going sledging down the moor, trousers frozen hard from knees to boots, and even if I do get an apple, an orange and a bottle of lemonade they won’t taste the same as they did in 1947, when an oxo-cube was a treat. But there is still the joy of sending letters to Santa telling him I’d like socks; the joy of seeing others glad with what he’s brought them; the luxury of a day when you can do nothing, with the tacit approval of conscience; the turkey which is ‘perfectly cooked’ even when it isn’t, and tastes better than a Bronze even though it’s only a Frozen.
And, above all, the carols: ringing in my head ever since Primary Three, and now ringing out at Classic FM, Free Church carol-services, and school-concerts where Buddhists, Muslims and Edinburgh City councillors join happily with Christians in singing of ‘our heavenly Lord, that with his blood mankind hath bought’