So, here we are then, at the climax of another 365 days, when Old Father Time, AD2006 version, has to surrender his throne to that young upstart 2007. Already in the Antipodes, the famous fireworks over Sydney Harbour Bridge, which created such a memorable image seven years ago for the millennium, will have fizzled out and jaded revellers will be feeding the new babe with tinnies and prawnies as their Summer also reaches its height. Having made contact this year (by which I still mean MMVI for the moment) with paternal cousins in Oz for the first time, I've a special reason to think of them with affection at this time.
Back here in Blighty, though, the celebrations won't be getting into gear for another four hours or so at least yet. New Year's Eve, in England at least, is a strange beast. Everybody feels they ought to be celebrating it, but a great many people don't seem to know how. And if Christmas Night seems over too soon, then the significance of this night is even more short-lived. Twelve bongs, a few thousand simultaneous bangs and then the ringing headache after too much booze, and for many- that's it. I've often thought that, actually, 1st January is just a public hangover cure masquerading as a public holiday.
Perhaps part of the problem is that this has become such a long break in the UK that most folk are tired out come midnight on the 31st. Tuesday the second will indeed have to be a heave for some,- though not those in North Britain, aka Scotland-back onto crowded commuter trains and the further shock to the wallet of the London Congestion Charge resuming, after all the festive excesses and credit card overtime. New Year can certainly bring folk down to earth quicker than a rocket stick.
Maybe it's also the case, though, that the start of the recognised civil New Year throughout most of the world now, has absolutely no significance beyond an arbitrary date on the calendar. 31st December and 1st January no more celebrate an actual astronomical event than the constellation of the Great Bear depicts an actual ursine. The earth's annual transit of the sun actually takes up rather inconveniently a little more than 365 actual days so there never was or is a point when we can truly mark the passing of this unit of time.
Maybe, in some ways, the Judaic and Islamic faiths have a more accurate calendar by focussing on the lunar year rather than the solar one, but this does lead to the somewhat inconvenient occurrence of some of their feasts and fasts at the most incongenial time some years- though this year's Hajj to Mecca, reaching it's climax co-incidentally on 1st January in the Western Calendar, seems to have attracted as astounding a number of pilgrims as ever. No doubt everyone is praying that there will be no repeat of the tragedies of recent years where sheer weight of numbers has led to stampedes and many fatalities.
For most of us, though, the turn of the year offers a convenient point for our own "annual assessment", whether in employment or not. It's the time to look back on what has been achieved and what has not during the previous twelve months, and it's the time to look forward to what the new year may offer. If ever a Christian feast were to be created for it, I guess it could be the feast of Hope: "O God Our Help in Ages past, Our Hope for Years to Come" certainly seems to have been a prevalent post-Christmas hymn heard on radio services this week.
Some may see hope in the year ahead for changes in the world's worst trouble spots. I'm no supporter of capital punishment, but the execution of Saddam Hussein on 30th December certainly brought to an end one chapter in the history of the pain-filled nation which is currently Iraq. But it hasn't solved the problems, which remain, and many must still be filled with fear, not just in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, as a new year begins.
On the other hand, it's a new beginning for the United Nations, with a new Secretary-General about to take over from Kofi Annan. Ban Ki-Moon certainly looks like being a very different personality to his pre-decessor, being described in a BBC News Article as a "mild-mannered" man more interested in administration than diplomacy. But mild manners can maketh man and can lift nations from despair to hope. Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent, after all, was definitively meek. I certainly don't envy Ban Ki-Moon his job, but I do pray and wish him well in it.
When all is said and done, each new year brings the hope that we are drawing closer to the return of another superman- one who, literally, was man but was also above the limitations of man and his petty, hateful, mindset. Jesus, the boy born in a lowly manger in that ill-regarded outpost which today suffers surrounded by the brick walls of fear and division which is the modern day Holy Land, grew up to be a man who offered more hope to humankind than any dictator, international leader or statesman ever can. He offered people the chance to be their real selves, to discover life in all its fulness, to be rid of enslavement to our own shortcomings- aka sin- and to find new life in him.
I don't know what this next year will bring, either for me, for you, or for the world. I could be the guy with the half-full glass of optimism, or the misanthrope with the half-empty poisoned challice of fear. I'm neither. Reminded this morning at my church's last service of 2006, I turn again to John Betjeman's lovely poem, Christmas, for a reminder of what to celebrate on New Year's Eve. Being part of the family of man, of course, and the community of nations, but more so, being one of those many billions that God so loved that he gave his ONLY son for us:
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
I wish you a joyful, peaceful and prosperous time ahead- and thanks for reading my ramblings in 2006. Keep journeying with me, anyway, as we tread into 2007. Happy New Year!
Sunday 31 December 2006
Thursday 28 December 2006
Blank Holidays
These last days of December are a peculiar phenomenon in the UK. In three-sevenths of years (disregarding leap years for tidiness), the 27th and/or the 28th are designated as "Bank Holidays", and financial service workers, at least, either endure or enjoy the continuing Christmas festivities with a clear conscience as they take their legal entitlement to extra leave. Whenever one or both of the original December holidays- the 25th and 26th- fall on a Saturday or a Sunday, the next weekdays are observed as the official holiday(s).
This arrangement seems to have received royal assent sometime in the 1970s, but it probably would have happened anyway whether or not it had official sanction. 2006 is not one of those years where the calendar and the largesse of the Department of Trade and Industry cause extra bank holidays to occur after Christmas, but for industry at least it's still laid-back Britain until the 2nd January. So many firms, small and large, take a winter break and in my view that's no bad thing.
Some, of course, rail against the now established tendency to take nearly a fortnight's absence from the workplace between Christmas and New Year's Day, claiming it has an adverse effect on the economy and favours our competitors. What Scrooge-ish rot; I'm all in favour of it. This is probably about the closest 21st-century Britain will ever come to keeping the original "Twelve Days of Christmas" immortalised in the carol of the same title but originally reflecting a Christian festival which emphasises so much more of the whole Christmas story than can fit into the too swiftly passed 24 hours of Christmas Day.
Each of the four days after Christmas Day has a feast or commemoration associated with it in the church calendar. Good King Wenceslas has helped to ensure that everyone knows about the Feast of Stephen, the first Christian Martyr, which is more commonly observed in Britain and it's former colonies as "Boxing Day". For those outside the UK, I should perhaps explain that this is not a governmental edict to indulge in post-festive bare- knuckle fighting, but refers to the tradition of the church opening it's alms boxes on this day and then distributing the contents to the poor of the parishes. By extension, it soon became also the day when tradesmen hoped to be favoured by the seasonal generosity of their clients in gratitude for a good year's service to them.
Today though, and regrettably, about the only boxes you'll see being opened on 26th December are the night safes of the banks as the biggest names in the high streets and malls deposit their takings for what more cynically might now be called Buying Day. Whereas once you could rely on two days freedom from the trend to spend, today's 24/7 world allows only the briefest of amnestys from the passage of cash and the worship of mammon, it seems. And for the viewer of commercial television, there's no let up even on Christmas Day as we're reminded constantly on screen that "sale starts 9 a.m Boxing Day".
For heaven's sake, do we really need all this? Are we so desperate or greedy for a clothing or homeware bargain that we will leave homes and families on Christmas night to queue for the Next sale to open it's doors, and start fighting with fellow mad shoppers when it doesn't do so on time? It speaks volumes, I think, of how far British society has fallen from one of respect, courtesy and reverence to an every man for himself mentality which is the polar opposite of the spirit of the season.
I don't want to appear so other-worldly that I won't admit to enjoying a bargain, even after the excesses of spending and giving of Christmas- but it can wait another day. On the 27th and 28th, I was out there too, rummaging among the designer labels or the Waterstone's bookshelves for cannily reduced products I probably wouldn't have got before Christmas. But there's a price to pay for our bargains which is every bit as obscene as the sweatshop rates still so prevalent in the two-thirds world where most of the garments are manufactured these days. And the days of leisure of some are gained at the expense of the quality family time that shop workers too should be able to enjoy with their loved ones on Boxing Day. Governments hark on about the breakdown of family life, but given this largely unchecked descent into unfettered till-opening, is it any wonder that so many suffer through our long hours, overwork culture?
Meanwhile, for those not tied to the barcode and the stockroom, the respective "feasts" of St John the Evangelist, The Holy Innocents and The Holy Family provide more opportunity to spend time in rest and, dare I hope, reflection. Few churches these days will have special services for these events, but at least there is a special feeling in the air, still, which if you take time to breathe it in adds much spiritual rather than financial value to this protracted sequence of Holy Days.
You could feel it today in the winter sunshine which has at last replaced the gloomy grey cloud which has afflicted much of the British Isles for the last couple of weeks. You could breathe it and smell it in the seasonal fragrance of the somnolent shrubs and hedges of the Walled Garden in Sunbury on Thames where I grabbed an hour or so of fresh air this afternoon. You could sense the festive essence still in the sights of wildfowl who've escaped the Christmas feasting to enjoy their natural habitat on the waters of the nearby River Thames.
And after dusk, though the solstice has now passed and sunset already becomes later each day,for the moment you can still observe and enjoy that wonderful Christmas spirit in the comforting lights of many different colours that still adorn so many homes, shops and public buildings and surely should do til next Monday, the start of the New Year, at least. Unless you happen to be a certain pub chain which seems to have decreed Christmas ends on Boxing Day so down come the decorations. Shameful.
For once this year, the post-Christmas blues can still be enjoyed more illuminating a Christmas tree rather than sorrowing an anti-climaxed soul, for me at least. We can, as one of the carols says "keep a Christmas in our heart". Indeed, it's right that we should do so, really, until January 6th, which is the "Feast of the Epiphany". We may moan about many of the ways mainland Europeans seek to change our national ways at times, but I rather wish that some EU edict would decree that 6th January is recognised as it should be here, as it already is there. That feast commemorates the visit of the magi (wise men, or three kings) to the infant Christ and is symbolic of his revelation to all the world.
"Twelfth Night" therefore is the time when, as another carol puts it, "need they no created light". Our celestial ball is starting to bring more hours of daylight, but there's still much darkness in the world. It will take more than a fibre optic or a mini-watt bulb to illuminate, or should I say eliminate, that. What we really need is for our inner selves, our spirits to be fed as much as our tummies will have been come that date when the feasting stops for the time being. Maybe if we once again start to enjoy and observe these "holy days" until then, we might catch a little glimmer of that light to see us through til next Christmas.
This arrangement seems to have received royal assent sometime in the 1970s, but it probably would have happened anyway whether or not it had official sanction. 2006 is not one of those years where the calendar and the largesse of the Department of Trade and Industry cause extra bank holidays to occur after Christmas, but for industry at least it's still laid-back Britain until the 2nd January. So many firms, small and large, take a winter break and in my view that's no bad thing.
Some, of course, rail against the now established tendency to take nearly a fortnight's absence from the workplace between Christmas and New Year's Day, claiming it has an adverse effect on the economy and favours our competitors. What Scrooge-ish rot; I'm all in favour of it. This is probably about the closest 21st-century Britain will ever come to keeping the original "Twelve Days of Christmas" immortalised in the carol of the same title but originally reflecting a Christian festival which emphasises so much more of the whole Christmas story than can fit into the too swiftly passed 24 hours of Christmas Day.
Each of the four days after Christmas Day has a feast or commemoration associated with it in the church calendar. Good King Wenceslas has helped to ensure that everyone knows about the Feast of Stephen, the first Christian Martyr, which is more commonly observed in Britain and it's former colonies as "Boxing Day". For those outside the UK, I should perhaps explain that this is not a governmental edict to indulge in post-festive bare- knuckle fighting, but refers to the tradition of the church opening it's alms boxes on this day and then distributing the contents to the poor of the parishes. By extension, it soon became also the day when tradesmen hoped to be favoured by the seasonal generosity of their clients in gratitude for a good year's service to them.
Today though, and regrettably, about the only boxes you'll see being opened on 26th December are the night safes of the banks as the biggest names in the high streets and malls deposit their takings for what more cynically might now be called Buying Day. Whereas once you could rely on two days freedom from the trend to spend, today's 24/7 world allows only the briefest of amnestys from the passage of cash and the worship of mammon, it seems. And for the viewer of commercial television, there's no let up even on Christmas Day as we're reminded constantly on screen that "sale starts 9 a.m Boxing Day".
For heaven's sake, do we really need all this? Are we so desperate or greedy for a clothing or homeware bargain that we will leave homes and families on Christmas night to queue for the Next sale to open it's doors, and start fighting with fellow mad shoppers when it doesn't do so on time? It speaks volumes, I think, of how far British society has fallen from one of respect, courtesy and reverence to an every man for himself mentality which is the polar opposite of the spirit of the season.
I don't want to appear so other-worldly that I won't admit to enjoying a bargain, even after the excesses of spending and giving of Christmas- but it can wait another day. On the 27th and 28th, I was out there too, rummaging among the designer labels or the Waterstone's bookshelves for cannily reduced products I probably wouldn't have got before Christmas. But there's a price to pay for our bargains which is every bit as obscene as the sweatshop rates still so prevalent in the two-thirds world where most of the garments are manufactured these days. And the days of leisure of some are gained at the expense of the quality family time that shop workers too should be able to enjoy with their loved ones on Boxing Day. Governments hark on about the breakdown of family life, but given this largely unchecked descent into unfettered till-opening, is it any wonder that so many suffer through our long hours, overwork culture?
Meanwhile, for those not tied to the barcode and the stockroom, the respective "feasts" of St John the Evangelist, The Holy Innocents and The Holy Family provide more opportunity to spend time in rest and, dare I hope, reflection. Few churches these days will have special services for these events, but at least there is a special feeling in the air, still, which if you take time to breathe it in adds much spiritual rather than financial value to this protracted sequence of Holy Days.
You could feel it today in the winter sunshine which has at last replaced the gloomy grey cloud which has afflicted much of the British Isles for the last couple of weeks. You could breathe it and smell it in the seasonal fragrance of the somnolent shrubs and hedges of the Walled Garden in Sunbury on Thames where I grabbed an hour or so of fresh air this afternoon. You could sense the festive essence still in the sights of wildfowl who've escaped the Christmas feasting to enjoy their natural habitat on the waters of the nearby River Thames.
And after dusk, though the solstice has now passed and sunset already becomes later each day,for the moment you can still observe and enjoy that wonderful Christmas spirit in the comforting lights of many different colours that still adorn so many homes, shops and public buildings and surely should do til next Monday, the start of the New Year, at least. Unless you happen to be a certain pub chain which seems to have decreed Christmas ends on Boxing Day so down come the decorations. Shameful.
For once this year, the post-Christmas blues can still be enjoyed more illuminating a Christmas tree rather than sorrowing an anti-climaxed soul, for me at least. We can, as one of the carols says "keep a Christmas in our heart". Indeed, it's right that we should do so, really, until January 6th, which is the "Feast of the Epiphany". We may moan about many of the ways mainland Europeans seek to change our national ways at times, but I rather wish that some EU edict would decree that 6th January is recognised as it should be here, as it already is there. That feast commemorates the visit of the magi (wise men, or three kings) to the infant Christ and is symbolic of his revelation to all the world.
"Twelfth Night" therefore is the time when, as another carol puts it, "need they no created light". Our celestial ball is starting to bring more hours of daylight, but there's still much darkness in the world. It will take more than a fibre optic or a mini-watt bulb to illuminate, or should I say eliminate, that. What we really need is for our inner selves, our spirits to be fed as much as our tummies will have been come that date when the feasting stops for the time being. Maybe if we once again start to enjoy and observe these "holy days" until then, we might catch a little glimmer of that light to see us through til next Christmas.
Sunday 24 December 2006
Waiter, Waiter!
Last night, I went out for a "bonzer" scoff of some Aussie-themed tucker with two friends and my brother to celebrate his birthday. My younger sibling has always been very gracious about having to celebrate his natal day amongst all the other distractions and busy-ness of the week before Christmas, but I can't help feeling a bit sorry for him. You wait all year for it to come round and then it can almost get lost under the postman's pile of Christmas cards and festive goodies filling the fridge. And it's over before you know it.
I wonder if we treat Christmas a bit like that? Today is Christmas Eve, a day with a unique atmosphere which you cannot bottle like the Cointreau I finished my meal with last night. There is a buzz in the shoppers thronging the streets in a last minute dash to get gifts for their loved ones, or more likely enough vittals to see them through to, ooh all of 24 hours or so. Maybe even 48 if you count Boxing Day.
But it is also a Sunday. A special Sunday too: the fourth Sunday in Advent. Ask most ordinary Joes or Marys on the street today what Advent means, and you might if you're lucky get the response "chocolate calendars"! The last of the doors will have been most eagerly opened today by wide-eyed children everywhere in the parts of the world that celebrate Christmas. But will they have a clue why they have to wait so long to open number 24, or so it will have seemed to them.
Advent is about waiting. The trouble is, we live in a society that doesn't like waiting for anything. It's got to be instant- instant messaging, instant winning with the lottery or instant mash for hard-pressed Mums today who haven't the time to cook anything for tonight's meal because of all the preparations for tomorrow.
Britain is a land famed for it's polite queueing or as Americans would have it, waiting in line. But the tradition shows signs of cracking. Time is the new gold, it seems and people no longer want to wait to get their goods. They'll give anything to save time. The Argos chain of catalogue stores are alert to this, and today their hard-pressed staff will be frantically bringing out orders placed on-line, by phone or even by text by folk too lazy or too impatient to take their turn in the queue in store but just want to pick it up later.
Yet sometimes, nature has a habit of reminding us that, actually, we can't always have what we want instantly and we just have to wait. Harrassed travellers at Heathrow Airport, just to my North from where I sit, had to learn that this week as the thickest December fog Britain has seen in many years grounded many internal and short-haul flights. Mercifully for people travelling to their beloved families this Christmas, the fog has now lifted and flights were expected to be back to normal today, but a lesson will perhaps have been learnt.
I wish the same could be said for our society as a whole and that people would re-learn some of the true meaning of Advent. As Christmas Eve, today is a wonderful treasure, but to benefit from its full joy, everywhere that celebrates it has to wait a few more hours before the reason for the season finally brings forth the most precious gift of all. For believers, it's the Christ child. For those who profess no faith, love will still come down and reveal itself again to most in loving families.
But not to all. Still we wait for the day when there will be no more tears from the lonely and deserted, no more grief from the bereaved, no more sickness or sadness, no more pestilence or poverty. Will we ever see that day? Well, the writer of one of the Bible's Psalms, possibly King David himself, one of Jesus' earthly ancestors, certainly believed so. He said "I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living".
In a world that lacks so much, yet assumes it has plenty, there is still a real hope of a better tomorrow. There is hope because in the Northern winter, the season of dead nature and cold, people still celebrate the warmth and light of life in all its fulness- even when that fulness might mean a bloated belly for a little while. And Advent is all about hope. Not just anticipating the celebration tomorrow of the birth of Christ, but of his promise of coming again and bringing all things in history to completion, instantly.
This is a promise which keeps me and other believers going and celebrating every day of their lives, not just on the 25th December (or early January in the Orthodox tradition). But the promise was bought at a price greater than any Harrod's price tag, in blood redder than a santa claus suit on the Good Friday cross- but taken back to the creator and replaced with new, everlasting life on Easter Day. Even Duracell can't promise that with their essential batteries.
If you've been a regular reader of Anyway, I thank you for your support and interest this year- and for waiting! I know it's been a couple of months now since I last posted anything, partly due to other writing commitments recently. But I still love sharing these thoughts with you from time to time, and if you've been helped or touched by them in any way, or have any questions, please hit the comment option at the bottom of this posting. Otherwise, I hope you'll stay visiting and I wish you and your families a joyful, peaceful and Happy Christmas.
I wonder if we treat Christmas a bit like that? Today is Christmas Eve, a day with a unique atmosphere which you cannot bottle like the Cointreau I finished my meal with last night. There is a buzz in the shoppers thronging the streets in a last minute dash to get gifts for their loved ones, or more likely enough vittals to see them through to, ooh all of 24 hours or so. Maybe even 48 if you count Boxing Day.
But it is also a Sunday. A special Sunday too: the fourth Sunday in Advent. Ask most ordinary Joes or Marys on the street today what Advent means, and you might if you're lucky get the response "chocolate calendars"! The last of the doors will have been most eagerly opened today by wide-eyed children everywhere in the parts of the world that celebrate Christmas. But will they have a clue why they have to wait so long to open number 24, or so it will have seemed to them.
Advent is about waiting. The trouble is, we live in a society that doesn't like waiting for anything. It's got to be instant- instant messaging, instant winning with the lottery or instant mash for hard-pressed Mums today who haven't the time to cook anything for tonight's meal because of all the preparations for tomorrow.
Britain is a land famed for it's polite queueing or as Americans would have it, waiting in line. But the tradition shows signs of cracking. Time is the new gold, it seems and people no longer want to wait to get their goods. They'll give anything to save time. The Argos chain of catalogue stores are alert to this, and today their hard-pressed staff will be frantically bringing out orders placed on-line, by phone or even by text by folk too lazy or too impatient to take their turn in the queue in store but just want to pick it up later.
Yet sometimes, nature has a habit of reminding us that, actually, we can't always have what we want instantly and we just have to wait. Harrassed travellers at Heathrow Airport, just to my North from where I sit, had to learn that this week as the thickest December fog Britain has seen in many years grounded many internal and short-haul flights. Mercifully for people travelling to their beloved families this Christmas, the fog has now lifted and flights were expected to be back to normal today, but a lesson will perhaps have been learnt.
I wish the same could be said for our society as a whole and that people would re-learn some of the true meaning of Advent. As Christmas Eve, today is a wonderful treasure, but to benefit from its full joy, everywhere that celebrates it has to wait a few more hours before the reason for the season finally brings forth the most precious gift of all. For believers, it's the Christ child. For those who profess no faith, love will still come down and reveal itself again to most in loving families.
But not to all. Still we wait for the day when there will be no more tears from the lonely and deserted, no more grief from the bereaved, no more sickness or sadness, no more pestilence or poverty. Will we ever see that day? Well, the writer of one of the Bible's Psalms, possibly King David himself, one of Jesus' earthly ancestors, certainly believed so. He said "I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living".
In a world that lacks so much, yet assumes it has plenty, there is still a real hope of a better tomorrow. There is hope because in the Northern winter, the season of dead nature and cold, people still celebrate the warmth and light of life in all its fulness- even when that fulness might mean a bloated belly for a little while. And Advent is all about hope. Not just anticipating the celebration tomorrow of the birth of Christ, but of his promise of coming again and bringing all things in history to completion, instantly.
This is a promise which keeps me and other believers going and celebrating every day of their lives, not just on the 25th December (or early January in the Orthodox tradition). But the promise was bought at a price greater than any Harrod's price tag, in blood redder than a santa claus suit on the Good Friday cross- but taken back to the creator and replaced with new, everlasting life on Easter Day. Even Duracell can't promise that with their essential batteries.
If you've been a regular reader of Anyway, I thank you for your support and interest this year- and for waiting! I know it's been a couple of months now since I last posted anything, partly due to other writing commitments recently. But I still love sharing these thoughts with you from time to time, and if you've been helped or touched by them in any way, or have any questions, please hit the comment option at the bottom of this posting. Otherwise, I hope you'll stay visiting and I wish you and your families a joyful, peaceful and Happy Christmas.
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