My PC (Post-Christmas) Blog

Crisp, cold mornings - how we love them! Revel in their bright, inviting, deeply motivating energy. Let's get out there! A brisk walk, healthy, invigorating, blowing away the cobwebs, exercising our weary limbs, nudging our jaded metabolism into action, bringing a rosy warmth to our cheeks and a sparkle to our eyes. A healthy lifestyle for the taking - who needs the gym? Actually, it's raining today, so maybe I do!

Some years ago (well, actually, quite a lot of years), living in a small rural community, I remember those bright, chilly days, walking to work in the crisp, early morning, delighting in the sunlight, the white, frosted rooftops, the wintry gardens, full of orange rosehips and red-berried holly trees, tall, bleached pampas grasses and dark green fir trees. I would arrive at work breathless and glowing, my cheeks matching my warm, red, woollen scarf and my matching red hat pulled down over my frozen ears. "You look like a little carol singer" my friend, Gill, would tell me as I peeled off the layers of clothing and tried to thaw out beside the radiator.

Now Christmas is over for another year! That glorious post-Christmas feeling! Freedom from all the rush, the pressure, the present buying, the food shopping, the parties, the baking and basting and the eating and drinking... Time to put your feet up and enjoy a well-earned rest! Christmas! It's been a strange one this year. There are global problems - and not only in the eurozone. After two thousand years plus of revelling, a growing multi-culturalism and an obsession with political correctness, things are turning on their heads a little.

This year our Muslim friends from Turkey sent us warm greetings and wished us a 'Merry Christmas'! Another friend wished us 'wonderful holidays' and a 'holy 2012'. Another wrote from Australia, calling for us to banish 'winter festivals' and put the 'Christ' back in Christmas trees - a reasonable request considering the origins of the festival they celebrate! The British prime minister, uneasy at the state of the nation, has been urging us all back to 'Christian values' and the Queen herself, in her Christmas broadcast, called us all gently to account and surprised us all by recommending us to consider escape from the excesses of that 'recklessness and greed' that trouble us all by opening our hearts to the Christian Saviour!

These are desperate times and may call for desperate remedies. Time to find a balance between the relentless demands of the material world and spirituality? Doubtless there is a touch of political point-scoring involved here and definitions of 'Christian values' come in a variety of shades of colour, but there are interesting developments afoot in our weary and ailing world.

It's nearly 2012 already! Time to cast our minds back over the past year and evaluate. Maybe a brisk walk in the wintry weather is the first step towards clearing the head whilst we consider the options... Happy New Year everyone!

A baby's eye view...

What is this thing we call Christmas? We do it every year - devout Christians, atheists, agnostics - nearly everyone in the 'Christian hemisphere' does it. We've always done it. It's like cutting the tail off the Christmas goose before you put it in the oven (poor goose). Once upon a time the oven was too small, so you developed a strategy. Now, well, now no-one can remember why but they do it anyway.

Modern Christmas is like that! Crazy, crazy, crazy! Stress, migraine, mounting debt and still we do it. Shop till you drop. Party till you're pissed. Stuff till you're... well, stuffed!

So what would be the baby's eye view on all this? After all, it all started with a baby, didn't it? A manger full of straw, a draughty stable, a few rustic shepherds... what would Jesus do? WWJD? Words fail us - what would Jesus do? Things seem to have got a little out of hand these past two thousand years. I guess the wise men have something to answer for, starting us off on all this decadence. They came late to the party, we're told, but they brought gifts - gold, smelly stuff, cosmetics - high class stuff! And now we have to bring presents. And that's when the trouble started...

What shall I buy for Aunt Flo? Would Granny like a tin of biscuits? Can I have a mini-fridge for my bedroom, mum? But I wanted a playstation...! I think maybe Jesus is a little bemused right now. The heavenly host too are still waiting for that elusive peace on earth to start and singing their midnight song in the clear night air. Come to that, I'm confused too!

Mind you, when you ask people what they are hoping for this Christmas they often come up with expectations for the season of peace and goodwill that don't sound too much out of line with the original intention - warm, loving family gatherings; chilling out over a good meal and taking time to share some precious moments with your loved ones; a protest against rampant materialism outside St. Paul's Cathedral (WWJD?); helping out at a shelter for the homeless, serving a Christmas meal and a warm smile to those who have nothing in life; inviting the bereaved, the lonely and the oddballs to share a Christmas Day meal with you in your own home; an armistice in the midst of wartime hostilities... Maybe we've forgotten the baby, the donkey and the wise men, but perhaps there's still hope for our poor old human race. There's still some warmth and cheer to be found and still a bit of room at the inn... "Jesus would be with the St. Paul's protesters this Christmas" says Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe he's right.

Jingle bells, Batman smells!

Parodies! We love 'em! Why do we do that? Why do we take some perfectly innocent song, rhyme or Christmas carol that someone has spent hours lovingly creating and deliberately ruin it - just for fun! We just can't resist, it seems. It has to be something well known in order for others to get the point. It seems it has to rhyme. (So if you don't want anyone to parody your poem make sure it doesn't rhyme!) It is often something poignant, romantic, maybe a little 'naf' and then we have just the material we need to work on. Bing Crosby's 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas' would be eminently suitable...

Christmas carols are the perfect choice. Endowed with centuries of powerful meaning, romantic imagery and the stuff imagination and dreams are made of, Christmas carols provide the perfect medium for us to practise our art or maybe our art-less skills on. You don't have to be quite so artless as 'Jingle bells, Batman smells' but you can if the mood takes you!

One of my favourite parodies of all time is probably the Spinners' rendering of that famous tried and tested carol 'While Shepherds Watched'. At school we giggled and tittered through school singing lessons and assemblies as the most daring amongst us bravely sang out the latest version of this carol, about these rustic chaps washing their socks in the fields at night whilst the angels entertained them with heavenly melodies (tub rhyming with scrub). But the Spinners (in my opinion) did it best when they pictured the shepherds huddling in the wintry fields around a giant television screen (a drive-in movie?) and the angel of the Lord seizing the moral high ground and switching their harmless amusement from ITV to the more educational and cultured BBC (rhyming with ITV) emissions. As far as I know, ITV never won any law suits against them as a result. Sounds a bit tame recounting it like this but to its first audiences it was hilariously funny (really!).

At school in the '70s, parodies featuring the Beatles were the obvious choice. 'We Three Kings' (of Liverpool are) was transformed for us by the substitution of 'John on his scooter, blowing his hooter, Following Ringo Star'! Remember that one? We were simple folk in those days and easily pleased.

Of course, all these reminiscences and ramblings are somewhat culturally defined so probably most of my readers from Russia, Singapore and Nairobi (I wish!) have no clue as to my meaning, but I am sure there are many out there for whom this rings a bell or strikes a chord. More than one music band has made a fortune out of simply parodying someone else's material. They say nothing is original - all creativity stems from something someone else has said, written, painted already so there's no shame and no blame! Plagiarism - no! Parodying - why not?

December again - already!

December: the final month of the year. The end of the run! We made it! For me a month of white lights, frosty mornings, red candles, baking extravaganzas, present wrapping, choosing of Christmas cards, shopping and a hundred and one last minute tasks. A month of chilly starts, Christmas tree sellers under draughty railway bridges, bright red poinsettias on the window sill, shopping, visits to family and friends at home and abroad and, hopefully, some surprises! For my Australian friends I guess it's a month of beach barbeques, swimming pools, T-shirts and shorts and, on the down side, worries about bush fire alerts. Isn't our world strangely wonderful? Christmas pudding on the beach??

Here in the northern hemisphere we're on our way (dragged screaming and kicking, many of us) towards the thick of winter, desperately hoping to avoid the excesses of last year's snow and ice. There are some, I know, who are passionate about all that cold white stuff - I know there are a few of those eccentrics about and not all of them under ten years old - but I am not among them! In the south, the temperature is on the way up, the fire hazard warnings will be out, the sun is shining, the sea is warm and yet it's still Christmas! I never could get my head round that...

Of course, not all of us celebrate Christmas. I'm going to a 'Winter Fair' tomorrow, a title which acknowledges that fact. Living in a multi-cultural community, with neighbours from hundreds of different racial and cultural backgrounds there are no assumptions made. Not 'Christmas', just 'Winter'. But still the romantic associations are there - winter, ice, snowflakes, husky dogs, warm woollen sweaters and furry boots. It's that time of year and for me that includes Christmas! I'm a sucker for seasons. I'm so glad I live in a part of the world that has clearly defined seasons (even though current climate changes seem to have confused things for us a little lately). Actually, it's been a strange autumn, so mild, and I have roses, fuchsias and forsythia blooming in my garden at present, but I still know it's winter - and they shouldn't be! This time last year, in this same season, we were up to our ears in snow.

So to all of you who celebrate Christmas, I'm getting in early to wish you a happy one with as much peace and goodwill and as little hassle as possible! If you celebrate winter, I envy you (my passion is for summer!) but enjoy it. If you're heading into summer right now, enjoy! And for everyone alike, happy December! It's come round again!