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Commentary for
favorite radio station, WAMC, by Dave Belden. Aired around Christmas 2000.
Christmas
I sometimes wish I could give my twelve-year-old son, brought up in Stone Ridge, New York, a glimpse of the Christmases I grew up with in Mayfair, one of the posh parts of London, in the 50s and 60s.
What was different?
For a start, real candles on the tree. Our living room was a good twelve feet high, because we lived in an aristocratic 18th century London town house. The tree almost touched the ceiling. We decorated it with glass balls and handmade ornaments. But what made it magic was about fifty real candles, in little metal candleholders clipped to the twigs. We sat in the dark before the candles hushed in wonder. I was shortsighted and loved to take off my glasses and look at the fuzzy glowing balls of light on the tree: it was peaceful and holy.
It was my job as a child to see to the safety of the tree. I kept a bucket of water and a mop behind the tall red curtains in case things got out of hand. I was very proud that my father trusted me with the whole house and all the dozen or so lives it held.
That was another difference: the numbers of people. Our house slept sixteen to twenty, and it was usually full. And here's where my idyllic Christmas card picture of Olde aristocratic England morphs into something unfamiliar. My parents and everyone living with us were full time, unpaid workers in an energetic religious movement, which went by the name of the Oxford Group or Moral Re-Armament. Some Americans know of the Oxford Group as the movement out of which Alcoholics Anonymous grew. It was well known in England then, and controversial - its detractors called it a cult - but that's another story. For me as a child, my community's beliefs meant there was no disconnect between the materialistic Christmas of the presents, and the holy Christmas of the Christ child. We didn't have much money - in fact the house, its furnishings and even the tree were all gifts from the movement's supporters. When asked, we said that we lived on faith and prayer. Our carols were sung with true Christian fervor. And we all pitched in to help. In our house the men always did the washing up.
Every moment of every day in our lives was supposed to be an occasion for evangelism, or for changing lives - as we called it. But at Christmas we felt we could relax and sing and eat and watch the tree. One reason was that over Christmas we always had my two oldest bachelor uncles to stay. These uncles were not members of the movement. Uncle Ted actually seemed to hate it. "Your father only married your mother for her money," he whispered to me more than once. But he always came. For their sakes, the overt evangelism was suppressed. I was happy for that.
After the turkey at Christmas dinner, my mother would call me out to the pantry. We never drank alcohol but she bought duty free brandy for this moment. She heated brandy in a ladle until it ignited and then she poured it over the hot Christmas pudding. I bore the pudding enveloped in dancing blue flames into the darkened dining room and placed it before my father on the huge glossy table. He scooped out the first serving as fast as he could and thrust it before my Uncle Ted, who attempted to get a spoonful of still burning pudding into his mouth. He usually made it. And for some reason the old curmudgeon often got the silver sixpence hidden in the pudding as well. I wonder now if my father, knowing how much Ted liked money, engineered it.
By contrast with then, our Christmases now seem shifted towards the ersatz: no candles on the tree, and just our tiny nuclear family with our relatives thousands of miles away. We are cultural Christians - we love the carols but don't believe the Christ child was God. That's when I wish to give my son a glimpse back to what I knew. But be real: if he saw there was no Playstation, no skateboards and that much piety and washing up, I know he'd prefer what he's got. And last year he did get a piece of pudding into his mouth still flaming.
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