Ghosts of Christmasses Past

My brothers were in charge of the annual nativity or ‘crib’ at the Sacred Heart, Tunstall. I would go along with them and they would let me help. There  was a beautiful deep blue cyclorama evoking the night skies of Bethlehem. I thought it was magical. I loved that I was one of the first people in the parish to see the crib each year and lucky to have glimpsed  behind the scenes

Midnight Mass was just that. A Mass at midnight. It was exciting to be out of the house so late. I remember walking to the church at the top of the road and looking out for Santa Claus. I willed myself to see sleigh tracks across the snow capped rooves.

I saw Santa at a children’s event organised by Tunstall Park. Santa looked a lot like Cyril the park keeper.  He was and he wasn’t depending in which way the flame of a little boy’s belief flickered. 

Then I grew up and had to wait years to feel magic again.

I inherited the role of God’s Bouncer from my brothers. Light shining through stained glass on a dark, winter’s night can attract drunks on their zig-zag, staggering path home. My job was to stop them coming into church. My usual tactic was to send them down the road to the Methodist church. No harm done there. That church would be all locked up. Only we Catholics like the bells, smells and drama of a midnight Mass. Nevertheless, I didn’t like the idea of stopping people entering God’s house and there is a very thin line between devotion, drunkenness and mental  illness.  I allowed one man in after he assured me he just wanted to pray to God at the end of the year. As chance would have it he sat next to my mother, my father sitting at the front in readiness to read the lesson. As soon as the organ piped up for the opening hymn, this man raised his hands to the sky and declaimed ‘Praise the Lord!’ My mother looked round at me and honoured me with the most withering of looks. I had to go up to him and making use of my height as a subliminal underscoring, informed the man that ‘We don’t do that sort of thing here’. He settled down and I do think he found comfort there.

The first time you spend Christmas Day alone, you cry. There is so much cultural weight to bear and filter out. You feel like a failure.  But, like all things, it gets better and soon becomes nothing at all. I try to treat myself as the people who love me would treat me were they with me. It also good to be free of talking and the overpopulation of words. You can hear the creak as the planet cranks itself into a new cycle. You can think of the Holy Family and understand the greatest Christmas present of them all. And you can bring to mind old acquaintances from days long gone (Auld Lang Syne). Many an ocean broad has roared since then and life goes on. Life goes on.