Musical Christmas Gem 01

One of the joys of Christmas for me is listening to music I don't hear for the rest of the year. Some of it is on CDs that are locked away for 11 months before being brought out with the tree, etc. Others are on my i-tunes but remain unticked for most of the year. Let me tell you some things that are there.

1. Good King Wenceslas by The Roches from the 1994 album We Three Kings

Thanks to Terry Wogan this LP is no longer a secret nor are the unique Roche sisters, who I assumed were Irish at first but are in fact New Yorkers (Maggie, Suzzy and Terre).

The hymn is a Christmas favourite (outside church). J M Neale thought it up in 

the Victorian period basing it on the legend but making a good application at the end. (I quote it in my commentary on Proverbs).

This pleasant version is enhanced by the bright strings and the pleasant harmonies.

"THE ROCHES came into being one Christmas season on the streets of New York City singing these very songs. And every year when the hassles and tensions of Christmas set in, we rediscover the joyful, peaceful spirit of Christmas through these carols. This record is a dream come true for us. We send it out into the world with best wishes for everyone!"

Five Christmas Films

1. Arthur Christmas (2011)

2. Elf (2003)

3. Christmas with the Kranks (2004)

4. Millions (2004)

5. Nativity (2006)

I seemed to have watched more Christmas movies than usual a few years go (2011).

1. There was Arthur Christmas with two of my (older) boys who hadn't seen it either at the cinema. Highly competent it was a fine film though it could have benefited from being 10 or 20 minutes shorter. As is so often done the Christmas myth has been taken up and adapted to produce a heart warming and fun story in impossible cartoon style. If only life was so simple. No high spots in this film but quite a spectacle in some ways.

2. A couple of weeks before that I had watched our Elf DVD with two of the boys. It's often been on in the background but I'd never watched it properly until then. It's an excellent comedy exploring the oft visited theme of an innocent abroad, an elf in New York on this occasion. Great fun. I love Will Ferrell's reaction when told that his father is on the naughty list. Arthur does show a similar spirit with his "A child's been missed!" but not as funny.
3. More recently I'd joined the boys watching Christmas with the Kranks on DVD. I have a soft spot for this as I read the book first - John Grisham's Skipping Christmas and on that basis we all saw it in the cinema when it came out. It's okay and very Christmassy with the usual Hollywood optimism thrown in but hardly a great film, I guess. It got panned at the time. I liked Tim Allen's botox scene.

4. Then another time my son Dylan was looking for a film and found Danny Boyle's film Millions on BBC iplayer. This is technically not a Christmas film but no doubt was on TV for its Christmas content. Coming out of a Roman Catholic milieu and raising various ethical issues it was a great alternative Christmas film and as a comedy is as good as anything in this list. Well worth seeking out. Apparently the screenplay was written in response to an interview remark by Martin Scorsese about reading the lives of the saints. The book "Six O'Clock Saints" from the fifties is very much at the heart of the story. (Perhaps the worst scene in the film features St Peter supposedly giving that old liberal rubbish about the feeding of the 5000 being just a matter of sharing).

5. Nativity was on TV that Christmas. We may have the DVD somewhere. I've still never watched it all the way through. It looks like fun.

Winter in Switzerland Cropsey 1861

Winter in Switzerland by Jasper Francis Cropsey 1861

Christmas Grotto

Kids still get to see Santa at Christmas but it's not like the old days. They all go in together these days. Often they don't even ask what you want for Christmas. They just encourage kids to leave mince pies out for Santa!

When I was a boy it was quite different. Little boys sat on Santa's knee for their photo. For various reasons that doesn't happen today.

So here's a snap of me in the corner of a sixties supermarket sat on some bloke's knee. I wonder who he was. (Assuming it wasn't the real one).

In the bleak midwinter

I was once preaching when I tried to describe how bleak things were in Israel just before Christ came. As I was trying to conjure it up, the hymn by Christian Rossetti (1830-1894), sister of the Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti brothers, came to mind. It begins

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone:
Snow had fallen, Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, Long time ago.

I like the hymn I must confess (I have a favourite version by Bert Jansch) but disliked the emphasis on the weather. Who knows whether it was snowing anyway? On reflection, I guess that Rossetti's point is not meteorological but metaphorical. She is using the ice and snow to picture the hardness and sin that characterised those times in Israel.

It is the same in C S Lewis's first Narnia story where the faun Mr Tumnus speaks to Lucy about the evil witch and famously says 'It's she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!'
(Rossetti's poem was written before 1872 and published posthumously in her Poetic Works (1904). It appeared in The English Hymnal 1906. She apparently wrote these words in response to a request from the magazine Scribner’s Monthly for a Christmas poem.
Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the second book in the series and the first to be published. It appeared in 1950. The quote is from Chapter 2).