Writing a column on the celebration of Christmas is a little like trying to illustrate the scope and scale of Shakespeare with one or two quotations; you can succeed about as well as the man who tried describing the marvellous cathedral at Chartres by showing a carved stone and single piece of stained glass as specimens of the building’s majesty.
The words that rise in my memory at Christmas are not from the commercial jingles that contaminate the airwaves too often at this season, nor are they from the nostalgic lullabies of yesteryear, nor from the more robust Christmas calypsos trying to cash in on Christ as well as Carnival, nor even from the beautiful but hackneyed carols like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Adeste Fideles.’
The words that stand out are from T S Eliot’s astringently beautiful poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi,’ and they are not words particularly full of merriment or traditional good cheer or festive laughter. You should read it all, but here are a few of the opening lines.
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter……………….
Then the camel-men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor
and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack
of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears saying
That this was all folly.
It reminds us that in the beginning Christmas was very much more about faith than it was about festivity – a hard journey, not just a happy outing. The men who made that first journey to attend the poor village birth were tempted by frivolity:
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet
And yet in the end it was not such easy joys that they discovered and which haunted them forever that first Christmas day. It is a profoundly moving poem. Read it, read it all, as a plain and unwrapped gift to yourself at Christmas.
And so, amid the fruit punch and the rum-soaked cake, and the aromatic garlic pork and the undone gift wrapping blowing in the wind, and amid the laughter of friends and the hugs of bright-eyed children, whose time this really is, and amid the songs and joyful carols and the dancing still to come, and around the tables loaded with the fruits of this good earth – go out for a moment in some quiet place, entirely by yourself, and think of the hard journey other people are making of it – no sparklers or 5-year old for them for sure, and goodwill nowhere near. Compare the 800 million people who live in the 10 richest countries in the world with the same number, 800 million, their brothers and sisters, who every night fall asleep starving – Christmas night for them no different whatsoever to any other night.
You know it as well as I do, what we are really celebrating is the Christmas of the rich, elaborated and added to through the centuries. Nothing wrong in that – we are lucky to be doing so. But, still, it is good to remember that it was not so in the beginning, not so at all.
And yet I only want to divert your merriment for a while and make you think of harder times and sadder people whose fate we must not forget. Since I first enjoyed a Guyanese Christmas 58 years ago I have never wanted to be anywhere else and I do not think I ever will. And so, even though the stern music of Eliot’s poem leads me to remember that this one world where we live can be both one man’s Paradise and his brother’s Calvary, I know that I am the last person not to look for fun and laughter where I can find it.
And, since this is the time of goodwill which lies at the heart of love, let me tell you two lines from John Donne which we should never forget.
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, monthes, which are the rags
of time.
Love endures, yet it has no duration, since duration involves time and love “no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday.” It melts the poles of past and future, time’s east and west. And now, at Christmas, it remains, as always, the best gift by far to share.
A couple of years ago a good friend Philip O’Meara, sent me an old poem of great beauty. Here are the lines from the Irish translated by John O’Donahue, which I like to share as a New Year beckons and there may be those I care very much for who face hard days and unfavourable winds.
Beannacht – Blessing
On the day when
The weight deadens your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the curragh of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life …
