Yule blog

I had a very amusing time at the Press Books Christmas party, in particular being filmed by Ben, Richard, and Julian for the Christmas e-greeting* which I have urged them to call the Yule Blog. And maybe you’ll blog with me this Christmas – cyber pudding to fill those weird down moments.

One of the ten questions I was asked on camera: “What three words pop into your head when you think of Christmas?” Despite being an author, I was lost for any words at all. Finally, I came up with “dark”. Hmm, I thought, pretty heavy. What did I mean by “dark”? Could I contrast it with “light”? Or even “candles”? To suggest I was picturing a glowing, churchy scene? Jo Malone ad, I thought.

So I squeezed out “silly”. That seemed worse. Silly Christmas? Finally, I forced myself to say “family”. That’s the right word, the word people expect to hear. But whose family did I have in mind? The holy family? A generic Hello magazine family? I don’t tend to think of my own family as a group; I tend to think of them each separately, my husband, my three children, by their names in fact, and by their individual, sometimes unpredictable chemistry.

What I should have said is: When I think of Christmas, I think of my three novels, Canarino, Leninsky Prospekt, and What You Will. Each has a Christmas scene in it. I didn’t even realize it until today. In fact, two
have Christmas episodes, not just scenes. What can THIS mean? Well, dark is about right.

If I could sum up what was going on when I wrote about Christmas all those times, it must have been something along the lines of trying to contrast what our culture implies Christmas ought to be about – even if you don’t believe Jesus was born on Christmas day to save mankind from sin, you might believe in peace on earth and good will to men – with how Christmas really plays out.

However cynical we may be about Christmas, its coming always seems to rouse in people the wish for things to be different.

Certainly it’s a day on which there may be no place to hide from our personal life, neither at work nor at school nor out shopping. Some of us may man a soup kitchen, a phone line for the Samaritans, go meaningfully to church, but for many of us, nothing happens on Christmas Day beyond the hearth and the heart, so nothing can protect us from the truth of our intimate relationships and our spiritual condition. If our lives are blessed by the presence of small children, we have a thin screen of laughter between us and the dark. (Maybe that’s where silly comes in.) But even small children grow up. Oh, goodness, that’s huge. No wonder so few adults can bear Christmas.

When I think about Christmas in literature, obviously Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” comes to mind. And I also love the O’Henry story called “The Gift of the Magi” – in which two people sacrifice a most valued possession to give a gift to the other, only to find that their gifts cancel each other out – heartbreakingly.

What’s your favorite Christmas passage? I’d like to know, and I’d like to know why.

[*just you wait - Ed ]