December 2025 - Christmas Spirit

THOUGHTS FROM A DEVONSHIRE FARMHOUSE

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My theme this month: Christmas Spirit

Apologies to those of you who for religious or personal reasons do not celebrate Christmas, but this post is about Christmas. I’ll be honest here, I don’t follow the religious belief , maybe Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, that bit is historically plausible, but not the rest of it.  ‘Christmas’ was, after all, originally a pagan celebration here in what is now England – England became England around the mid-500s when the Anglo-Saxons migrated from across the Channel. (I think I mentioned in a previous post that cross-Channel small boat illegal immigration is nothing new!) (Oh, and after them in 1066 came the Normans and before all of those, came the Romans and before them, the Celtic Britons who celebrated their Celtic festivals, the winter one being a mid-winter ritual for the solstice – around the 21^st of the month. (Other countries did their own ‘thing’ – the Romans, for instance, celebrated Saturnalia.)

 

Stonehenge may possibly have been a public place to celebrate the rising of the winter sun as much as today, we assume it was erected for mid-summer. Elsewhere there are Neolithic monuments at Newgrange in Ireland, Maes Howe in Orkney and Bryn Celli Ddu in Ynys Môn, Wales, which were burial chambers centred on capturing the sun’s rays during the solstices.

Yule is the pre-Christian festival. Christianity adopted these early rituals in a sort of ‘can’t beat ’em so let’s join ’em’ way of thinking. Simply put, swap Yule for the Nativity, while Easter came from the Spring Equinox, Imbolc and Eostre.

The story of the shepherds always rather puzzles me: it rarely occurs to anyone that there aren’t lambs  born in the middle of December...

Christmas 2009 was a difficult time. December had been an absolute sh*t of a month. I had pulled a ligament in my groin (agony is an understatement.) I was laid up unable to move for most of the month. Early in the month we unexpectedly lost one of our horses. Then my mother had a fall and broke her wrist – I spent seven hours standing in A &E  (yes in agony  I went through the pain barrier twice). She was admitted to hospital, then I couldn’t get about enough to see her until Christmas Eve, when loaded with painkillers and purloining a wheelchair I managed to visit. I was back at her bedside in the early hours of Christmas morning. She’d died a few minutes before I’d managed to get there. So a memory never to be set aside. She was 92.

 

Most of our traditions are either Victorian – or remnants of the pagan Celts. Mistletoe comes from the Druids. It was gathered from oak trees to ward off evil spirits and grant good luck. In Norse mythology, mistletoe is the symbol of love – hence kissing under the mistletoe. The Yule Log was brought in to burn from 19th - 31st December. Fire during these twelve days, when the nights were longer than the days, would bring back the sun and the light.

Holly, ivy and greenery symbolise the coming of spring and new life – appropriate for the Christian birth of Jesus belief. The Christmas Tree echoes the bringing indoors of greenery, but is a Victorian tradition. (And real or fake trees is a Climate Change debate - my tree is a live one which lives outside in a large pot. It is just by the front room window so I'll festoon it with solar=powered lights and have a small fake one indoors.) 

Christmas lights, again, are for lighting the darkness and decorations are traditionally taken down on Twelfth Night, January 6^th. Last year it was late March before we got around to putting them back up in the loft, though.

And as for Santa... well, we all know he sort of exists! 

I had a disagreement with a friend’s mother years ago about Santa. She asked if I was happy with telling my young daughter (Kathy was then either four or five) blatant lies. When I asked what she meant she answered, “Telling her that Santa exists.”

I was horrified that she expected me to be truthful – I argued back that all stories aren’t truthful: fairytales, the tooth fairy, Winnie-The-Pooh, the Rev Awdry’s Train stories. Unicorns... Imagination is as essential, and as important, as telling the truth, especially where children (and authors!) are concerned.

Did she really expect me not to help Kathy write her Christmas Letter to Santa and post it up the chimney? (If nothing else it helped to know what she really wanted for Christmas... Ok, a pony...) Did she really expect us not to leave out a mince pie and a carrot for Santa and his reindeer?

So I ignored her. Silly woman. For the record, Kathy is now in her early forties - and we still leave out a mince pie and a carrot ... (Well, you never know.)

 

My earliest memory of Christmas: I was 3½ . I clearly recall waking up and seeing a dim, grey dawn brightening the bedroom window over to my right, and wriggling down the bed, feeling a heavy pillowcase at the bottom. The bedroom was at Byron Road, Walthamstow (hence I know my age because we moved to Chingford when I was four.) I have in mind Number 53 (but apparently it was 47). Grandad Jones was in the next street along – at the dustbin factory. I remember that as a scary place with weird-looking machinery.

Then another Christmas at our Chingford house: sleeping on a mattress on the floor with several other cousins and aunts and uncles who’d come down from Manchester to stay. I had a toy farm set that year – I can’t remember the animals, but clearly remember the collie dog. I wonder what happened to him?

Christmas Night or Boxing Day evening over at Auntie Elsie and Uncle Dick’s... being put to bed upstairs and hearing the grown-ups laughing downstairs, (and waking up, as if by magic in my own bed back home.) Then as I grew older, playing cards or charades. Family Christmas dinners... one awful one for my elder sister because there were thirteen of us, so she was made to sit by herself to ensure only twelve sat at the table. Nowadays I would have created merry hell at such idiocy! (Especially  given that my birthday is on a 13^th – so some superstitions are utterly bonkers. And anyway – why couldn’t one of the adults have sat on their own?

Christmas at my own house, with Kathy aged about four. Waiting for her to fall asleep, then sneaking in with a sack full of presents. Only I touched the growly tiger toy and it started growling... fortunately she didn’t wake up.

Another Christmas: my husband, Ron, was a dustman then (refuse collector) and he’d found a rocking horse that was being thrown out. He sneaked it home and our neighbour ‘stabled’ it in the run-up to Christmas and while I cleaned and repaired it – adding a new mane and tail, hiding the worn patches, making a bridle and a smart rug. Kathy’s face that Christmas morning when she found him ‘grazing’ beside the tree. That is a treasure to remember.

We still have him, he lives upstairs on the landing. He’s called Mushroom, because he’s mushroom coloured.

Then another year when Kathy was upset. Cousin Tom had got his dream present, a computer. Kathy didn’t get hers, a pony. Never mind, she had it for the next (13^th) birthday instead. And we’ve had ponies ever since. 

So Christmas, whether you follow the Christian, pagan or whatever belief, is a time for family and making memories. I came across a wonderful quote a few years ago about Christmas:

“Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas when you stop opening presents and listen.” Bobby - age 7

Happy Christmas to you all

and this always makes me laugh

when the Grim Reaper meets Santa...

Goodbye until next year

lege feliciter (read happily)

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