24 December 1954
About a fortnight ago I was made aware that Christmas was near. Bits of nature seemed to have got into the shop windows; boughs with frost on them and rustic-work fences. Whenever I opened a newspaper or magazine I was told what I should give to her or she to me. Whole pages were devoted to advocating that I should put on a red robe and a white beard and present my wife with some large piece of domestic machinery.
Yet all this time I felt that somewhere Christmas still survived, if only I could get through all the flummery. I remembered true Christmases in my life: bells on one clear frosty morning travelling five miles over empty fields, and I thought of them as translucent waves of some quiet tide in the sky. I remembered a small tree lit with candles, and a church lit with candles; and the awed excitement of children, not only at stockings and presents, but at the atmosphere of the clear, short day – blue night with stars still at seven, then flooding sunlight and frost tinkling off the oaks; and then, the dinner eaten and the presents unwrapped, they looked up and the sky was orange-coloured and festive candles already giving light.
*
Mysterious it had seemed, going forth on Christmas morning in moon-and-star-light, seeing farmhouses twinkling like stars in the landscape, and village windows already shining. The church stood like an old horn lantern in the field. The porch was lit, but we could not see the lamp as we approached, only the glow from it upon the toothed Norman doorway, as though creating it out of the darkness. It was the language of Malory. We opened the door, and there were candles shining and a priest kneeling at the altar in an empty chapel. Was this Lancelot – Arthur slain and Guinevere dead – having put off the world? The past of England rushed in like an unfelt wind and filled the church. The whole universe and its stars seemed focused on the figure in the cluster of candles.
I remembered a particular joy in bringing in ivy and holly and embowering our rooms, when the children were small, and war ceased not by day or night even for Christmas. I remembered a reflection of childish pleasure in decorating the tree after they had gone to bed, and a sort of childish awe myself in lighting its candles next day, and standing gazing at it, and at the children gazing at it – as it were a melting back into my own infancy. I thought this would be always the same now every Christmas, as I touched the rough spiny fingers of the tree and enjoyed the living green which the candles lit. The live tree indoors with flames for flowers symbolized some life principle; it was an allegory, I did not know of what, a myth withindoors.
*
But we are growing all the time: the growing up of children makes us grow up a second time. Better than the Christmas of our childhood was the Christmas of our children’s childhood.
But that, too, is past. It is made up for by having them growing into understanding with us: it is good to have them with us in our world, alive to its problems, quickened by its beauties.
With these wisps of past Christmases in mind, I sought for the spirit of Christmas now that we are all adult. There is at first a daunting feeling when you wake up to its nearness. Christmas cards, presents. Who wants want? No longer can one amuse oneself, picking up amusing toys. I found myself jostling around a Christmas-card counter, dipping in the fourpenny box and turning up comic cats. But there are some people to whom you just cannot send comic cats. I dream of some way of solving the Christmas card problem which would be cheap, simple and in faultless taste. But what is it? I do not know, and meanwhile inexorably Christmas approaches, and ‘Choose, choose,’ commands the inner voice, as I rotate in the crowd, making half-hearted grabs at this card and that. At the third time round, I think perhaps the leaping stag would do for Aunt Aggie after all.
*
‘The wonderful little water-flowers,’ called a voice. I was still searching for Christmas. The eye lights on many irrelevances in this weeks-long pilgrimage. I was now in the open-air market. Here were bunches of clean celery, pot-flowers, and suddenly daffodils. I stopped and stared at them under the hard light, ‘that come before the swallow dares, and take . . .’ This was telescoping the seasons too much. Such a bold dream of spring seemed almost an impiety. ‘No thank you,’ I said to the vendor as much as to say, ‘These children should all be in bed and asleep.’
‘The wonderful little water-flowers’: again the cry rang out. I found them; they were the things of my childhood: they came in paper packets in crackers, but now they were a shilling; they expanded in water. A goldfish was negotiating a bouquet of them in a bowl. Just over the way, gazing at the wonderful little water-flowers, was a Christmas party of dolls, their stiff satiny frocks glistering under a naked electric bulb. This was under the huge grace of St Peter Mancroft, with men hugging mugs of tea and munching buns that crumbled down their chins. And everybody knowing everybody, that was the impression.
*
‘Well, old boy, it’s good to see you back.’ A blinkering, bespectacled, drooping, unprosperous individual was he to whom this was said, and he who said it was bluff but threadbare. So someone was glad to see this apparent cipher of humanity back – back from where, back to what? This was in a shopping alley, and a pig’s head which had been furnished with glass eyes, a monocle and a comic hat was staring from a shop window at them. Then from somewhere I heard a carol being sung. I looked around and through a gap between the shops saw a church window, richly aglow.
‘Glad to see you back, Harry,’ the man repeated. He really looked glad. Perhaps he felt at the sight of Harry’s face what I feel when I come to a familiar countryside again. If so, then surely he must be very near to Christmas. If one could feel like that about Harry surely Christmas would last from December to December.
Extract from Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Winter Notebook © Archant Community Media Limited 1950–1980
Illustrations © Beth Knight 2021
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