In these three “approaches” to Christmas I have tried to record different aspects of the Christmas holiday as reflected in my life (which I stress is not meant to be in any way representative - I’m just saying how things look to me).
So Christmas is a social holiday in which I make an effort to see friends and family (Approach to Christmas 1). It’s a commercial holiday in which the working year comes to a “jolly” end and I get a week to loaf around doing nothing (Approach to Christmas 2). And it’s also a religious holiday - Approach to Christmas 3.
This religious aspect has been particularly in the news this year with the publication of a survey (front page in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, half a page in this morning’s Independent) that recorded more Roman Catholics attending church services than Anglicans. The conclusion drawn is that England is no longer an Anglican country, and is mostly secular with a small but growing community of Roman Catholic religious extremists (as the Independent described them) on the margin. This might make good headline news, but from an historical and anthropological sense it is completely inaccurate.
The whole point of the Reformation that created the Church of England is that the English people do not need “a ministry of black coated men” to intervene between God and themselves. The ploughman in the fields and the cottager in his home were all equally endowed with the ability to read the Bible in English, say prayers in English (using Cranmer’s magnificent Prayer Book) and commune directly with the Almighty - with church attendance reserved for the sacraments. Therefore, when 25 million adults describe themselves as “nominally” Anglican, they have done all that is necessary to qualify as members of the (still) Established state religion.
From an anthropological point of view, this commitment to an abstract idea of Anglicanism is critical to the sense of identity “ordinary” people have. The religious dimension to a sense of identity goes far deeper than most people realise (or even suspect about themselves). It’s a fusion of (dazzling) literary heritage (especially the KJV), profound ancestor-worship (ie the current obsession with genealogy) and an innermost conviction that “we” are better than “them” (Cromwell’s proclamation of the “Elect” or chosen nation echoes still - even in the 1930s RF Delderfield was telling us God is an Englishman).
The reason there has not been any religious friction in this country since the seventeenth century is because Anglicanism has been so triumphant. Ordained, established (sorry, I mean Established) and literally crowned (the Coronation ceremony is a sacrament of the Church of England) nothing has been able (thus far) to shake the Anglican supremacy. And what would happen if the supremacy was ever shaken?
Psychologists advise that it is extremely dangerous to challenge someone’s self-identity. Miners riot when they are threatened with unemployment, “hard men” become violent when their sexual orientation is questioned, the divorce courts are notorious for the bitter recriminations that ensue when one partner in a relationship unilaterally decides to bring it to an end (thus changing the status and identity of their partner). You only have to look at Northern Ireland to see that British society is capable of throwing up its own religious ayatollahs.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to digress so much.
Returning to my own religious experiences in the run-up to Christmas, I have attended one (small) carol service last Friday, one (much bigger) service of Lessons and Carols yesterday, and will attend Midnight Mass (an Anglican mass) at 11.30 tonight.
Above: the carol service on Friday was at a small wayside chapel in a very remote part of the county. It was notable because it included a performance by a group of hand-bell ringers. I realise I am inviting ridicule by revealing I had attended such an event (the sort of thing that Billy Bragg would sneer at). Normally I would run a mile at any suggestion of amateur musical entertainment. But I have seen in the county’s churches many glass-fronted cases of hand-bells clearly unused. When I heard about this service I felt I ought to record it as an example of “living” history.
And as a musical event it was actually very good.
Above: the group started when two of their members found a box of hand-bells wrapped in old newspaper. There was a story that the bells had last been used at services during the Second World War (when ringing the bells in the church tower was only to be used in case of German invasion). The bells have been tuned, polished and completely restored and are now kept in this plush case.
Above: in many churches you will find cases of hand-bells no longer used. The tradition of hand-bell ringing has almost completely died out in the county. The film The Madness of King George opens with a group of hand-bell ringers performing before the king and queen (with members of the Court barely disguising their boredom).
Above: the Service of Lessons and Carols on Sunday was held at the minster down on the plain, the nave of the great church completely full. Very similar to the more famous service held at Kings College Cambridge on Christmas Eve, it began with a soloist singing Once in David’s royal city. About half-way through the service I found my mood of detached observation falling away, and I (increasingly cynical in my view of the world, no doubt corrupted by years of advertising marketing and PR, privately wicked in those small mean ways of wickedness that we keep hidden from public gaze), even I felt moved by the beauty of it all: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it” (as the Anglican priest intoned).
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