A season of ritual, celebration, and relaxed reading
A special Christmas edition of Times Past by Jonathan Smyth...
Over the centuries, the festival of Christmas has developed and expanded into a season of ritual, celebration and giving. By now, the tree will be decorated and displayed in the sitting room, and at the top of the street in your town, or village, a tree’s lights brighten the cold winter evening. As we slow down a little, and take stock of things, which is important, we may have the time to watch a Christmas film, to read Christmas stories or poetry. For me, there is one poem in particular that best captures the atmosphere of a rural Christmas. That poem is Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘A Christmas Childhood’.
Patrick Kavanagh
For sheer purity of expression, you cannot beat reading Patrick Kavanagh’s poem at Christmas, or in fact, at any time of the year. ‘A Christmas Childhood’ captures everything that is good about Christmas as observed through the mind’s eye of a nostalgic adult, gazing back to childhood innocence where in the simplicity of things, joy is found. Anyone, from a farming background understands perfectly well his talk about the ‘one side of the potato-pits’ covered in frost, or the placing of his ear to the paling post.
In the environment that surrounded him, amongst the drumlins of Monaghan, Kavanagh found meaning for all that he perceived to be sacred and holy, whether it is the ‘light between the ricks of hay and straw’, which he saw as ‘a hole in heaven’s gable’, or his mother milking the cows where her ‘stable-lamp was a star, and the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle’.
In particular, I liked his line about the ‘three whin bushes’ being the ‘Three Wise Kings’: a perfect example of seeing the extraordinary in an otherwise ordinary landscape. His powerful memories of his father playing the melodion at the gate to the twinkling stars are yet again very strong images and seem somewhat lonely as he reflects on the happy days of childhood.
Kavanagh’s poetry and its appreciation of what we already have on our doorstep, is a therapy for the modern age, beckoning people back to simplicity, asking them to find and see the sacred in the ordinary. Kavanagh’s work can and does teach us a lot.
Charles Dickens
Another great enthusiast of everything associated with Christmas was the writer of ‘A Christmas Carol’, Charles Dickens. I am a great admirer of the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge - the ruthless, greedy, grasping moneylender whose tale resonated with a world being drawn into an ever-increasing state of materialistic obsession. Dickens knew well the reality of the impoverished having experienced hardship himself, and therefore, he took a genuine interest in the less fortunate and after, visiting a school for orphans, he decided to write a novel to publicise the unfair inequality that existed between the richest, and the poorest of the working classes.
The ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, which old Scrooge encountered, are enough to make the hardest of hearts feel empathy and then, in the final act, he finds salvation, which is a relief.
The celebration of Christmas itself had almost disappeared in the early 19th century, that was, until Charles Dickens put the season firmly centre stage with his magical book, first published on December 19, 1843. Ever since that time, the book has undergone regular reprinting and, like Hamlet has toured theatres, shows and film studios have produced countless interpretations.
Today, following in his great grandfather’s footsteps, Gerald Charles Dickens, tours libraries and theatres around the world with his one man interpretation of ‘A Christmas Carol’. In 1993, Gerald Dickens, a professional actor, director and producer, was invited to create a show based on his famous relative’s groundbreaking Christmas story and the result was a tribute to the famous one man readings given by Charles Dickens to audiences around the world. The show became such a success that Gerald has continued to tour and, in recent years, he made a film of the story, which is set in locations said to have inspired Charles Dickens. It is good to know that this classic story continues to reach new audiences each year.
I would like to wish all readers a very happy Christmas and in the words of Charles Dickens’ smallest character, Tiny Tim, may “God bless us every one!”
A Christmas Childhood (an excerpt)
by Patrick Kavanagh
One side of the potato-pits was white with frost -
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.
The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven’s gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw -
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me.
To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood’s. Again.
The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch,
Or any common sight, the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.
My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.
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