Christmas is a time of happiness and excitement for children, those lucky enough to have families with the means to supply the presents, the festive food, the Christmas trees. Strange to think that Christmas festivities were once banned in England.
We always had real Christmas trees, and I can even remember some of the decorations that came out every year, like the pink and silver glass bird with a long filament tail. Mostly we had Christmas in Cape Town, but when we were younger we had Christmas in Knysna at my grandparents’ old Victorian house, Fair View, where I was born (which has since been flattened for a school playing field). To our great delight my grandparents’ tree had real candles flickering on the branches. They were little twirled candles of red, yellow, blue and green, and we thought they were just splendid. I remember my grandfather taking down a candle for each of us to hold, and the feeling of warm wax that inevitably fell on one’s hands. Today you would probably be chastised for doing that – yet what fun it was for us. As an adult working on newspapers, this time of the year was called “the silly season” because almost everyone was on holiday and nothing much happened. One can see that reflected in the articles that publications carry like: “Ten tips for the best turkey” or “Gifts for the man who has everything”. Pity the poor journos who have to write those. I came across a few “silly season” stories online this week. One was about an electric eel in an aquarium in the US where some gadget linked the eel’s electrical impulses to fairy lights on a Christmas tree outside the tank. Every time the eel had an electric “burst”, it lit up the lights. The things we do to creatures. One that I found interesting was a video on The Guardian site about when the English parliament banned Christmas celebrations for 17 years in the mid-1600s. No feasting, no dancing, no drinking. No plum pudding or mince pies! The video drew on a book by Judith Flanders called Christmas: A biography. Apparently Oliver Cromwell and his fellow Puritans frowned upon indulgence at Christmas and said there was no justification in the Bible for such sinful carrying-on. In 1644 they passed an Act of Parliament banning the festivities. There was to be no holiday either, and businesses were forced to stay open. The people were angry, and there was rioting in the streets, but it was not until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 that Christmas celebrations became legal in England again. Strange to think of Christmas carols as “banned songs”, or mince pies as subversive. Have a happy Christmas, and let’s hold thumbs for a New Year where good triumphs over bad, where corruption is rooted out, where we ditch negativity and use our talents and skills to help us onto the road to prosperity. And where the government opens the doors wide to the solar and wind sector to help keep the lights on.
