THOUGHTS AS THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS GO UP
Coloured lights and candlelight are minor
additions to any room, add a little tinsel and the room is transformed into a
grotto. The celebration of light and of bright and shiny things speaks to
something very deep in the psyche, something primitive even atavistic. We feel a thrill as the light plays with
shadows, glinting off tinsel, sometimes quivering, hit by a sudden draft,
sometimes standing erect as guards outside the Winter Palace. Christmas is many
things and long before it was subsumed into Christianity a mid-winter festival was
a time to keep the gloom at bay with fire and dancing and chanting. Despite all
the accumulated Christian symbolism Christmas still speaks to our pagan spirit.
This denial of hard facts, of cold sharp
reality was most starkly exposed by the reaction of Labour Party members to the
disastrous defeat in May. The election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of
the Labour Party makes the appointment of Caligula’s horse to the Senate seem
like sound political judgement. The result being that we are now de-facto
living in a one party state. That this party is the ideologically driven
Conservatives who want to dismantle the last remaining social democratic legacy
of the Atlee government, also attacking the BBC, with its public service ethos,
for good measure, is a catastrophe for this country. Barring miracles, the
Conservatives have at least ten years, probably fifteen in which to re-shape
the country in their own image. Indeed, we may never again see a viable social
democratic alternative to the right again.
The
UK is unlikely to stand the strain. Scotland, already semi-detached will break
away. Wales will rightly want to become free of the great Tory experiment and
seek every greater levels of autonomy. As for England we will have a state
characterised by public squalor and, for those fortunate enough to be the
favoured, private wealth.
Perhaps this is all too pessimistic perhaps
I am calling it all wrong, for I do not have the certainties of the Corbynites.
So light candles, put up the fairy lights, bedeck the tree and, for those that
still can, indulge in a wild bacchanalia[1],
for after all:-
‘Sometimes
things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.’
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.’
‘Sometimes’
- Sheenagh Pugh
Compliments of the Season
AT December 2015
[1] Though do remember the less fortunate, remember there is no iron
law that says you will never join them.
