Christmastime and Lucia

Let me say at once that it's very pleasant at Christmastime to exchange greetings and smiles with the people I know and like.

It's the darkest time of the year; the days are the shortest, the nights are the longest, and it's good to be merry. In olden days this merriment was in defiance of the cruel winter gods, and their malevolent allies, the frost giants and the grim monsters. Fire was the chief weapon against them, a focus of physical light and warmth for the village people who came together. Their other weapons were food and drink, the best they had, to celebrate the passing of one year and the promise of the one yet to come.

That's the kind of Christmas I would like best: a sincere, heartfelt week of face-to-face greetings and simple enjoyment, with much to sing about, much to reflect upon, and consolation in the thought that no matter what the failings of the year now ending, a brand new start can soon be made.

Oh well. That world has vanished. And most people would be glad that it has. So much nicer to enjoy the easy delights of a Black Friday purchase. The grim visceral brutality of computer games has replaced the old supernatural terrors.

I insist on striking an elemental note because I am so tired of commercialism. It has turned Christmastime - or should I more correctly say Yuletide? - into a ritual spree of buying expensive stuff, wrapping it up, presenting it with conventional words, unwrapping it, and then adding the New Thing to the Not-Really-Wanted pile. What does this have to do with Christmas?

I am wasting my breath, I know. A lot of people look forward to the orgy. Take the straightforward matter of Christmas cards. I stopped sending those in 2017, two Christmases ago. I felt guilty at the time, as if I had failed in an important duty to my friends and family. I felt better about it in 2018. And in 2019 (with ecological issues now to the fore) positively virtuous. Christmas cards consume an awful lot of wood pulp, and an awful lot of time that could be much more usefully spent. And what about the cost of postage? Of course the manufacturers and card shops would pooh-pooh this.

I got an an email from a friend yesterday evening, with an attachment - a short letter about the nicest moments of her past year, illustrated with photos. It was just right. It was electronic. I can and will keep it. And no tree was chopped down, no postman hurt their back delivering it, no weary refuse-collection operative will find it in my landfill bin come January.

Surprisingly, despite this being my third year of not sending any cards, I've received twenty-nine of them. Do people notice that I haven't sent them a card? Or doesn't it matter to them, because observing this part of the Christmas ritual is a vital element in their notion of what it's all about? I do understand that for some of my friends and family, Christmas just wouldn't seem right without sending out dozens of cards, no matter what the labour, no matter how pressed for time they are. I admit that those twenty-nine cards look very jolly arrayed on the Welsh Dresser in my lounge. I'm not going to stop people sending me cards if they want to, and if they enjoy doing it. But really, an email (with or without attachments) would do for me.

I face unspoken accusations of opting out, when I should be joining in. Am I then a female Scrooge? Does it really seem that 'Bah, humbug' is all I have to say?

Well, I'm not especially lavish or generous, but surely I'm not mean-spirited and parsimonious. Facing me across the table as I'm typing this are three expensive objects: a bottle of champagne, a magnum of prosecco, and a big box of Swiss chocolates. Gifts for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. In the kitchen are more bottles, and yummy artisan cheeses, that I'll also take along to the gatherings I've been invited to.

Yes, pagan gifts. To please not just one individual but several. To please us all. While the wolves howl outside, the monsters prowl, and the cruel winter gods in their ice-fastnesses frown in their spite.

I was too taken up with the recent General Election to write a post about St Lucia's Day. This fell on the 13th December, and is a day especially observed in Sweden. It used to begin with the little girl of the family, dressed as an angel, and with a crown of candles on her head, waking her parents up very early. She'd be singing 'Sankta Lucia' and there would be a breakfast ritual. Later that day older children and adults would do things to celebrate Lucia. It all kicked off the Swedish version of Christmas. Here's a picture from a book published in 1965, showing young women in full Lucia costume.

And here's a picture of a procession of smaller, much younger Lucias, from a book on Sweden published in 2009, apparently taken at their school.

Isn't that charming? A scene utterly missing from my own childhood. The thought brings tears to my eyes.

I have several books about Sweden, my ancestral home, collected in readiness for a trip there that has yet to be made. There's yet another picture I wanted to show, but I think it was in a book with a damaged cover, which I threw out when selling a previous house in 2005. It had been published in the 1950s, and had a beautiful picture in it of these angel-robed children, looking up wide-eyed in semi-darkness at big candles - almost a devoutly religious scene, although the Lucia celebration in Sweden is a secular affair. I so wish I'd thought to take a photo of that picture, before discarding the book, and regret it now when older and much more sentimental than I used to be.

As you will now understand, I yearn for an entirely un-British Christmas, one that I probably can't have. An impossible fusion of what-could-have-been with it's-now-too-late. But I will do my best.