The true spirit of Christmas (From The Northern Echo)

The true spirit of Christmas

2:10pm Tuesday 20th December 2011 in Peter Mullen By Peter Mullen

FUNNY how things from way back just pop into your head. As I peered through the curtains at a sodden dawn, I recalled an incident in the Co-op car park in Wetherby 30 years ago.

I was loading the Christmas turkey and some bottles of wine into the boot when I heard a loud crash and a tinkle of glass. A minor bump. Somebody reversing without looking where he was going. But the expected outburst “You ****ing stupid ****. What the **** did you think you were doing?” did not follow.

Instead, I saw the two drivers: one a bloke in a fluorescent anorak and the other a woman of a certain age in designer jeans that were – how shall I say? – not entirely suitable. “I’m so sorry. How stupid of me,” she said, bestowing upon him her effulgent smile. “Not at all. My fault.”

They exchanged names, addresses and insurance details with festive cheerfulness. I wondered what had gone wrong. Accusations of blame. Curses. Fisticuffs, even. When it came to minor traffic accidents, I had seen the lot. But not today. Here in the Wetherby car park in the depths of winter, peace was breaking out like a warm summer breeze. Of course, it was Christmas wot did it.

Never mind the dire economic circumstances that afflict us. Lay aside the frantic, fractious mood provoked in us by hours of Christmas shopping. Even ignore the squabbling kids. At this season of the year, peace and goodwill are always likely to land on us, little moments of happiness and forbearance.

This is the spirit captured supremely in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol when the repentant miser and curmudgeon Scrooge awakes transformed on Christmas morning, buys a turkey for his poor clerk Bob Cratchit and his family and pays for the treatment of the crippled Tiny Tim. Scrooge didn’t do any of this out of an attitude of professional do-gooding. He did it all out of a sense of something far superior – charity.

And charity was Charles Dickens’ theme. GK Chesterton says: “The only elementary ethical truth that is essential in the study of Dickens is that he had broad sympathies in a sense totally unknown to the social reformers who wallow in such phrases.”

I heard a wonderful talk on this subject at a carol service last week. It was the gathering of the Merchant Taylors Livery Company here in the City of London. The sermon was being given by the Master’s Chaplain. He was a proper, traditional parson who uses The King James Bible and The Book of Common Prayer. And he rides to hounds. It was one of the best, and certainly the shortest, sermons I’ve heard in 50 years.

He said: “Two influences have shaped England: Christian faith and personal wealth. It was Christianity which influenced rich men to establish charitable institutions, to build churches, schools and hospitals and to administer relief to the poor. The result is a society less barbarous. The USSR suppressed the Christian faith and confiscated personal wealth. Compare and contrast. Now, in which of these two countries would you prefer to live?”

You don’t have to be outwardly religious to be affected by the spirit of charity. Holy Joes are the most obnoxious of characters. But, even if you never set foot in a church or open the Bible, the faith practised for centuries in our land influences all our acts and moods.

A Happy Christmas.

As Tiny Tim said: “God bless us everyone.”