It's a Cracker: in search of Comfort and Joy

"Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring, happy bells, across the snow.
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true."
(Alfred Tennyson)

 

 I had already prepared this and another fairly light-hearted post for the New Year before events beyond Gigionsea shocked and saddened the world. Planes drop from the heavens and people continue to take up arms against each other; disease and discontent find seemingly endless ways to hide and thrive and re-invent in the dark recesses of fear and deprivation. The news through the yuletide period into the New Year has been bleak. I held onto my posts like leftover crackers, not wanting to be trite or uncaring.

Yet the truth of it is that terrible things really do happen everyday to good, ordinary people. There really are ''natural disasters''; the progression of technology is ultimately powerless against the might of the elements or the repeated lessons of human failing. If we have evolved as a species with our Googling of the best ''friendly bacteria'', we must accept that the tiniest, most insignificant-seeming microbe might grow and mutate and find alien ways to attack us.

Through it all, life remains essentially an unbidden gift and . Although I have my own boundaries, incidents and situations I would never make light of or joke about, I also respect the resilience of the smile. As I unashamedly believe in God, I believe that we can find the laughter of God everywhere; as often as we can invoke His tears.

We will all die: this is a certainty but no less distressing and even painful for that. Some of us will die young, some old. Some of us will die in planes, on the road, at the hands of another, in an anodyne hospital bed. The truest tragedy is not to have lived up to that moment; not to have said that ''hello'' as much as any goodbye. Not to have made that call, seen that sunset, painted that picture, held that person. Each time we witness the inevitability of our mortality or the indiscriminate lottery of fortune, surely we must find life all the more precious? Death is indeed inevitable but the giving and living of life are unconditionally wondrous, whatever church you will or won't subscribe along the way.

Many of the traditional excesses that found their way onto our Christmas dinner tables or hung around our bedraggled front rooms on New Year's Eve are rooted in the debauched and often cruel carnival that the Romans celebrated at Saturnalia. Depending on your viewpoint, Saturn was the resident god of seeds and harvest, liberation and wealth, waging war and death, Saturn's festival would run in the Julian calendar from around 17th December for more than a week. Animal and even human life was sacrificed, fires were lit, huge feasts consumed, lavish gifts and displays of affection and lust were exchanged. Within the continual partying, drunkenness, extravagant costumes, ribald humour and wild sex were to be expected. It was probably not unlike Brighton's West Street at dusk in the run-up to Christmas Eve.

At it's most innocuous, Saturnalia was also a festival of lights leading up to the winter solstice, with an abundance of candles lighting the quest for knowledge and truth. The advent of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman empire with the feast of the "Sol Invictus"; the Unconquerable Sun...

Our baubled Christmas trees and bumbled kisses under the mistletoe are steeped in Roman pagan beliefs. My own tree, Noel, now in his ninth year, is currently flickering outside my back door. His outdoor lights may be from B & Q, but his triangular shape and evergreen presence are rooted (sorry) in the conversion of pagan festivity to Christian celebration, with symbolism evolving to illustrate the holy trinity and eternal life.

I wondered where Christmas crackers originated from and was surprised to learn they only surfaced in 1840s Europe. One Tom Smith, a noted purveyor of confectionery, created larger "bon-bons", wrapped with a twist at the end. He inserted little love messages and tokens into the bon-bons; then small gifts, mottos and jokes. He latter added the banger mechanism to emulate the crackle and pop of  yuletide fires and fireworks. The revised name "cracker" is onomatopoeic. The inclusion of paper crowns takes us right back to Romans; even the servants would play at being kings for a few days.

Finding absurdity and joy in the nitty-gritty minutiae and harshest realities of life truly is as ancient as looking to the stars for miracles.

 

"Semper Saturnalia agunt. (They're always celebrating Saturnalia.)"

(Petronius)

 

"Non semper Saturnalia erunt. (It won't always be Saturnalia-time.)"

(Seneca)

"In Dulce Jubilo"  Mike Oldfield

 

 

(Photo: Gigi, album)

Noel the Christmas Tree; Comfort and Joy, from my home to yours x

 

Fire and shadows

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." 

(John 1:5) 

This post is a little late, due to demands of work, but I've felt compelled to complete it. On Good Friday, I attended a beautiful "Tenebrae" service, a Service of Shadows, and it's left a lasting impression on me.

"Tenebrae" is Latin for shadows or darkness. The Tenebrae has evolved from an ancient Christian ritual, most usually held on Good Friday, using diminishing light through extinguishing candles to symbolise the arrest, torture, trial, crucifixion and burial of Jesus. The enveloping darkness holds the sadness, helplessness and hopelessness after his death; a world without God. When I was at school, the Tenebrae would include a dramatic slamming of a church door or other dramatic noise to signify the closing of Jesus' tomb. 

I remember Tenebrae services from my younger days as sombre and deeply sad; even depressive, if I'm being totally honest. This Good Friday, I travelled to the parish of "Our Lady of Mercy and St Joseph", in Lymington in Hampshire, to take part in a beautiful service put together by the wonderful Cathy; assisted by the lovely parish priest, Father Danny. Although Tenebrae has evolved with many traditional and orthodox elements intact, the service at Lymington was incredibly effective. 

Belying the hard work that had gone into the preparation, it was a simple and seamless Tenebrae. About forty people attended on what was essentially a cold Friday night; the pretty parish church is quite small and seemed almost womb-like by flickering candlelight.

The service was obviously reflective and moving, but the beauty of it has stayed with me throughout Easter and is carrying me through the start of the great British summertime. I felt a real sense of quiet hopefulness during and after the service. At the edge of the New Forest and set across the Solent from the Isle of Wight, Lymington is often depicted as an affluent, self-contained area. But the quayside shops and pristine cottages front a town still darkened by poverty and social distress; the community of Our Lady of Mercy responds from a little pocket of kindness which is incredibly deep.

The intent of the service and the openness with which it was received were palpable. It's traditional to leave the Tenebrae in silence; the gathering on Friday in Lymington stayed in hushed contemplation long after the last candle of the service was blown out. There was a very real sense of acceptance and renewal and the affirmation of the faith at the heart of Easter. It was one of the most poignant church services I've been to: impossible not to feel touched by the spark made only brighter by the winter darkness.

"It is a time for shadows.

Before the glorious light of resurrection morning,

there are dark nights, and even darker days.

On our way toward rejoicing in the resurrection,

we are entering that shadow land, those days of darkness,

the darkness that stretched from the upper room to the tomb.

Dark days lie ahead,

somber days, shadowed days.

We have asked terrifying questions:

Will we notice the light, in the midst of so many shadows?

Would we notice the light, were it not for the shadows?

But we have ended with the triumphant question:

Would there be shadows, were it not for the light?

It is a time for shadows,

But it is also a time for hope."

(Adapted from Lee Magness' "Service of Shadows" 2009)

"There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?" 

(Frederick Buechner) 

"John Nineteen Forty-One",  from "Jesus Christ Superstar"