Every now and then, at Christmas…

 

It was not the time I fell in love with Knaresborough, but it was when I decided to commit to the relationship. I have a memory like a…like a… um…one of those things with holes in. Whereas it appears that most people’s synapses zip information along like a zillion rats out of a zillion drainpipes, mine are more reminiscent of a hastily assembled cascade of dominoes. Like dominoes too, they require an initial, inertial shove, before the fragments of memory can tumble into anything resembling a coherent recollection.

I suppose I could tie a knot in my handkerchief (but I don’t remember if I own one!) or set a reminder on my phone (I think I must have left it on charge somewhere…) and they would be all well and good, as prompts to remember to do those things I have yet to do. My issue though, is with inspiring the recall of those things I already have done.

Some say that smell is the most evocative of the senses – alas, I would not know. With the level of cruel irony only Mother Nature can bestow, my sense of smell is dismal, despite my being equipped with an unnecessarily large organ of olfaction. Oh well; it stops my spectacles from falling off, so I use it for that.

As my hearing deteriorates with age – I am quite deaf in two ears, so it’s just as well that the other one works! – sound imprints itself less than indelibly on my consciousness (If you know the joke about why Captain Kirk has three ears, then now is the time to tell it, but only to yourself, obviously). Unsurprisingly then, when I need to bring into the present the events of the past, it is more and more to photographs that I turn. For example: I was a king once – a king that brought gold! Yes, that’s me, standing on the far left. I imagine I’d been told to gaze reverentially at the newly born baby Jesus but I’m actually gawping adoringly at Rosemary Hewitt, who is holding him. Christmas 1971 it was, according to the faded ballpoint on the back of the print. I’d quite, quite forgotten but now – now I can see it, hear it, even (unfortunately) smell it again, and I am 8 years old once more.

It is perhaps the rituals of Christmas that resonate more redolently than any others…

All of which raises the question of how our ancestors – before sound and vision were electronically recordable – were aided in summoning up the past, and feeling the tug of the invisible thread than fastens us all to it. The answer is, I think, with ‘ritual’.

Through repetition and re-enactment of behaviours, we not only establish and maintain tradition at time of celebration, but also commemorate our connection to people and places now gone; through present laughter, our absent friends can still be with us. Certainly, remembrance would seem to be of great importance to us, both as individuals and as a species. The power of this instinct to feel ‘connected’ is so strong, that often we cannot help but remember, even those things we would much rather forget.

For many of us lucky enough to be born within this precise blink of time’s eye, in this particular part of our island Earth, it is perhaps the rituals of Christmas that resonate more redolently than any others, and yet…

Despite the warnings of visionaries as variously diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Charles Dickens and Dr Seuss, we scuttle about with our tinsel emblazoned blinkers on, straining under the unique pressures that this supposedly festive season can bring.

Whilst my own children were growing up, I often found myself cursing at my inability to provide what unforgiving expectation seemed to regard as ‘The Perfect Christmas’, having lost the perspective to even consider what the ‘Perfect Christmas’ might actually be. Now though, my (hopefully recyclable) blinkers are not just confined temporarily to a cardboard box, lurking ominously in the loft for the next Yuletide assault, but consigned forever to the bin of history. We take so many pictures now that we forget we have taken them. Whereas in the days of film, taking a photograph demanded a degree of careful composition, these days we fire off our cameras like an artillery barrage, insulting the moment, and assaulting our own capacity to be ‘in’ and ‘of’ it.

And it came to pass – archivist as I am – that whilst scrolling through the images downloaded to my own mobile device, that I came to remember just how much I had forgotten. Helpfully, my phone has remembered the date and place for me: Sat 7th Dec, 2019, Knaresborough, UK. The rest however, is up to me…

There is magic to be found at any time of the year in the Nidd Valley but at Christmas, it is illuminated by more than this, and thus, so am I. I stand in the lee of the church of St John The Baptist, looking down at, and yet, being elevated by, the view; a sinuous, serpentine chains of lights, hanging with a meticulously planned haphazardness along the riverbank, like hastily discarded strings of luminescent pearls. The water receives the light, joyously reflecting and magnifying it. There’s a message in there, somewhere; somewhere where angels are singing.

Inside the church there is decorum but no piety.

The rain of earlier has shuffled off across the darkening sky as if embarrassed. The few remaining streaks of benign cloud are dipped in moonlight. The air is cold, yet warmed by the sound of excited children engaged in the solid business of childhood, and adults, more self-consciously, wishing they could do the same; I know, for I am one of them.

Inside the church there is decorum but no piety. Here at least, the news of the Christ child’s introduction to the mortal world is not a cause for solemnity, but for rejoicing. Rows and rows of Christmas trees fill the aisles – they are temporary but welcome parishioners, their heads unbowed. Each tree decorated and personalised by a different local school, business or society, they irradiate the common bravery of hope, and a shared belief in the importance of community. I find the sight of them profoundly touching. I read the messages, thoughts and prayers that adorn them, and even I – devout in nothing but my lack of devotion – can only conclude that if God is love, then God is here tonight. As befitting our surroundings – and with a table booked at an Italian restaurant waiting patiently for our occupancy – my wife and I surrender not unto temptation, and do not indulge in the hot chocolate or cakes available.

Needing to change for dinner, we turn our reluctant feet back toward our hotel. Taking what we consider the prettiest, if somewhat indirect route, I gaze up, up at the star that tops the tree, which dominates the Market Square. Although only a seasonal fixture, like its smaller companions we have just viewed, it nevertheless evokes a sense of permanence, somehow.

I was a king once – a king that brought gold!

A random memory enters my head. It was 1967 and Christmas Eve. I was four years old. We did not have a star at the summit of our own modest family fir, but instead a rather battered, tragically ‘wingless’ angel; a veteran of many previous years stout service.

Whilst I was not looking – attention diverted by a monochrome Sooty and Sweep on our most unreliable television – my father turned the heavenly creature’s body round, so that she was facing the other way. He then drew my attention to this astonishing occurrence, declaring it to be a miracle and entirely beyond human kind’s capacity to explain. It is a feat he repeated several times throughout the course of the evening. It is his nimble, spin-bowling fingers that were behind the unfortunate celestial body’s dizzying rotation. In my head, of course I knew this – my heart though was oddly moved, and now – as I remember – it is again, only more so.

Is that a hint of snow in the air? We must hurry on, or we will be late for our appointment with pasta, and that would never do. I take a few steps before turning and fumbling with my phone, as I take a final photo. The virtual shutter snaps. It is a hurried, blurry, clumsy impression of frozen time, but it is priceless. The moment may be gone, but it is not, as yet, forgotten.

©Rich Musgrave/Robert Elland 2022

NorthernLife Nov/Dec 2022