Betjeman - the Last Parody... One last time

Honest, I was asked to re-post this once we reached December. I'm not just slackly filling up space. The original can be found here-> Betjeman at his silly/sacred best.


The cash-tills in the Arndale ring
We’re putting up the tatty bling
Our glowing icicles of white
Have blown away the last of night
In suburbs, hamlets, village greens
And towns from Slough to Milton Keynes.

The reindeers glowing on the lawn
And round the bungalow the strings
of fairy lights in many colours
and many flashing, tasteless things
mean that the passers-by can say
“That’s rather naff” on Christmas day.

The Coca-Cola lorries blaze
and Marks and Spencers' pockets fill.
The Go-Go Hamsters safely graze
while Simon Cowell's puppets still
can dream of having festive fun
when they’re the Christmas number one.

And up the airport Christmas Eve
They’re flying from the winter rain
As bankers quick the City leave
To spend their bonuses in Spain
And Easyjets go crashing by
And blotting out the Luton sky.

And lads in flats wonder where’s dad?
And pregnant girls take after mum
And drunken office typists wretch
And dodgy blokes say to them “Come
and we will share a festive lark
in some side-alley quiet and dark."

But is it true, can it be true
This most unlikely tale of all,
Told in a garden-centre’s hue
a cabbage-patch doll in ox’s stall?
the Maker of the day and night
parodied under fluorescent light?

And is it true? For if it is
No fabricated Christmas songs
No bishop raging ‘gainst the sight
Of tinsel and Ann Summers thongs
The vomit outside heaving pubs
And midnight slammers in tatty clubs

No Wii Fit underneath the tree
No plastic game that lasts three days
No office party’s all-night spree
Can ever this great Truth erase –
Our God was born to take our pain,
And shares it, ever and again.

---

Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. And don't forget it's nearly Christmas!

Reconsidering that Xmas Tree

I'm a little startled. The traditional advice with Christmas trees is that you use them like cut flowers - keep them well watered and then throw them out after Christmas. About six weeks after the needles fall off, that is.

 And yet I read of the oldest living tree - which is a Norway Spruce (albeit one living in Sweden). It is nearly 10 millennia old.

Suddenly I feel in awe, and just a little guilty. Maybe we'll go for pot-grown this year. Who'd have thought, by putting up Christmas decorations, you'd be shortening the life of another organism by 10,000 years?

And let's be honest - you'll never get much tinsel on that.

(Hat tip to Progressive Involvement for the link)

A Christmas SatRev

A little surprising this - or maybe not.

We used the "Satrev" technology to track a rural vicar as he went between his six churches' carol and Christingle services, eight school carol concerts, three nursing homes, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
And it came out looking just like the Star of Bethlehem! Who would have thought it?

The bad news for the vicar is that he's the kind that doesn't like to let people down. So as all his churches want a Midnight Mass, same as every year, he's taking a service starting on the hour, every hour from 8pm on Christmas Eve till 1am on Christmas Day. And then starting again at 7am for another six Christmas Morning services. In normal years the good news would be then he'd have a day or two off. But not this year. Oh, no. This year there's just the six Sunday Morning services as well, although only two churches still demand evensong. So he's got off a little lightly, when you think about it.

Advent

In the beginning, God created a universe so scary, stars must die screaming to make enough heavy elements to make just one small world.

And a world so scary, making the ingredients of life requires the kind of earthquakes and volcanoes that can destroy it.

And a bunch of people that just can't stop doing bad stuff, no matter how hard they try to do good stuff.

So maybe there's a kind of circularity there. Maybe it's the kind of universe where God has to take on those fragile elements, and be born into that scary world, and die, to know what it's like to live in the universe he made.

Hang onto the myrrh, Baby Jesus.

In search of the Christmas Donkey

It was the the reference to the Christmas Donkey from the Natwivity that made me ponder.

For surely we all know the story of the Little Donkey. How it carried Mary safely on her way, following a star to Bethlehem. And much is made of the heavy load it carried. And, somewhat strangely, it is exhorted to "ring out those bells tonight", which I suspect must have been terribly difficult with hooves.

So I hied me to the gospels to discover wherein the Little Donkey is mentioned. And found nothing. Not in Luke - angels, and censuses, and consuls of Syria in abundance. But no donkey. And not in Matthew. No, there is an unspecified number of wise persons but no Little Donkey. And I could not find the Nativity in Mark either. Which leads me to believe that the start of that Gospel fell off at the same time that apparently the end did. I've known that happen to books.

But there the song definitely is. And there are pictures as well.

Like this one. Although this is Giotto's Flight into Egypt, I'm sure we can assume that it's the same donkey.

So we have a problem of textual history here. How do we explain the well-attested presence of the donkey, but its absence from the Bible as it currently exists?

I considered the possibility that someone had gone around the world, expunging the reference to the donkey from all copies. But had to discount it. Sure, all that circumstantial stuff in Luke 2 regarding King David could have been put in place of the original words "taking his donkey", but consider the logistics. How could anyone, even with a good grasp of languages, have got round the world changing all those Bibles? It would have required a considerable team, and then Wikileaks would undoubtedly have got hold of it.

There is a possibility that Giotto, and all the artists in his line all the way down to the present day, could have invented the donkey to add a little colour. But let's face it, that seems pretty unlikely. I think we can accept that the donkey existed. Which leads me to my third suggestion. The one that had Drayton spluttering into his low-fat sugar-free cocoa last night.

Maybe the original version of Luke's Gospel had the Little Donkey in it. As it left Luke's pen, the text had the donkey - there along side the description of the dusty road and all the rest of it. But at an early point, before the Gospel had disseminated across the empire, that line had been lost. Maybe just what I believe is called a copyist's error. The scribe's wife called in to ask what the score was at the Colosseum, the line was lost, and the donkey passed from the scriptural record, although remembered in the folk memory.

It is an intriguing question what will happen if we ever find that earlier version of the Gospel including the donkey. Will the authorities recognise it for what it is? Will new versions of the Bible be rushed out incorporating the reinstated verse? Will verse re-numbering be called for?

I am determined that we get the answer to these questions. So I am organising an archaeological expedition. We're going to dig up the entire Sinai desert looking for earlier versions of Luke's Gospel. I've worked out this could be quite an expensive operation, so I'm looking for donations.

So don't forget, just £10 will buy us a spade. £8.35 will buy me a rather snazzy pith helmet.

Will you donate? You owe it to the Little Donkey.

Festival of Festive Foliage

Archdruid's Note: the Yule gathering-in of evergreen leaves, a symbol of everlasting life and hope in the midst of a deciduous world, is of great antiquity. Some have claimed that it is Celtic or even pre-Celtic. While others might point out that the first record of this happening is about the 15th Century. Either way the Festival Of Festive Foliage is an important part of Community Life, as we prepare for the Solsticial Darkapocalypse by gathering reminders of life and growth. For without growth there is no life, and without life no growth. And without that Christmas-tree smell where would Greg Lake's "I believe in Father Christmas" have found a rhyme for "peal of a bell"?

The Festival of Festive Foliage is a word-free liturgyn. We carry out this liturgical act with a soundtrack of "Stop the Cavalry". You may like to re-create the awesome experience this engenders by playing the video below.

Act of Gathering

The Moot House is empty except for Eileen and Daphne Hnaef. In front of the Important People's Area, on the  floor of the Moot House is drawn a large round circle. Before the Ceremony started, there was a small "Making the Circle" ceremony, which was both incomprehensible and rather boring. 

Ardwulf enters, bearing a sprig of holly. He lays it in the circle and takes his accustomed place.

Drogo and Marston enter, dragging a small Yule Log. They position it in the circle and take their accustomed places.

Edith Weston enters, bearing an amaryllis in flower.  There is a disagreement over whether this strictly constitutes foliage. The Archdruid suggests it be removed, but Edith appears on the edge of tears. For the sake of a peaceable community, the Archdruid is persuaded to let it lie. Lip-readers could see that she is muttering "it's a bloody flower" under her breath.

Aelfrithe enters, bearing a poinsettia. Mrs Hnaef persuades the Archdruid that those red things aren't flowers, they're a special kind of leaf. The Archdruid agrees to let it lie.


Elrod enters, bearing a bough of pyracantha. In line with good Health and Safety practice he is wearing wicket-keeper's gloves and welder's goggles. Sadly the goggles make him completely blind, so he trips over the Yule Log and impales his ear on the holly. He removes the googles, leaves the pyracantha where he dropped it, and takes his place, dabbing his bleeding ear with a piece of tissue.

Mr Woodhouse enters, with his son Mansfield bearing an African Violet. The Archdruid requests that Daphne bring it to her "because it's so lovely and I'd like to look more closely at it". Receiving it, she pulls all the flowers off and then throws the pot at Mansfield. Mansfield ducks and it catches Elrod a glancing blow. Mr Woodhouse goes back off to the Great House, saying he knew it would be dangerous to go to a ceremony.

Eloise enters, bearing a pine bough. The Archdruid smiles and makes a sign of blessing. Eloise discovers that Elrod has stood in her accustomed place, and throws him out. Elrod isn't having a great time.

 Drayton, having been convinced there is nothing pagan at all about collecting great piles of evergreen boughs for Yule, enters, bearing one end of a piece of ivy. Ten yards behind him, Kylie holds up the other end.  They take their accustomed places.

Amelie enters, bearing a blade of grass. She sees the ivy and asks whether it's poison ivy, as she's allergic to it. Drayton tells her it's not, Amelie says how does he know? Eileen points out that poison ivy doesn't grow in the United Kingdom. Amelie says that foreign species are being introduced all the time - haven't we all heard about that manatee living in the Serpentine? Eileen tells her to sit down and shut up. Amelie takes her accustomed place.

Burton Dassett appears, dragging a 12 foot Christmas tree on a go-kart.  It gets stuck in the door. He pulls it a bit but nothing happens. Then a bit more, and it topples off the go-kart and lands on Burton. Staggering around with his head wrapped in tinsel and fairy lights (for reasons known only to himself he has pre-decorated it), Burton crashes into Elrod and they both fall to the ground. Elrod catches his hand on a broken bauble.

Hnaef, who having spent the last week in an airport terminal has joined in the seasonal spirit in more ways than one, enters. Or to be precise he hurtles into the Moot House on a tractor, pulling a decent-sized pine tree. He runs over Elrod's foot, then shoots back out through the North-East Sunrise Door, scattering Beaker Folk in all directions. In the couple of moments that it takes her to dive behind the Liturgical Focus Table, Eileen notes that Hnaef, unlike Elrod, is wearing safety trainers. He has done well.

Anthem

The choir of little children break into the "choir" bit from The Darkness's "Christmas Time".

Act of Departure

Scared and dishevelled Beaker People climb back off the floor, and file off for a quick one before Filling Up of Beakers. At least the ceremony wasn't as bad or dangerous as last year. 

Official: Advent Over

That was the quietest Pouring out of Beakers I've ever known. I can't believe they all went off to Drayton's chapel for morning worship. And even drank his awful Baptist fair-trade coffee out of those chipped "Beryl" cups.

So there's nothing for it. Advent is hereby over.

This evening's Filling up of Beakers will now include mead in the beakers, and a generous helping of mince pies. We can then expect Dunstable Doughnuts at every ceremony from now until Yule, when the party really begins.

We're putting "Fairytale of New York" on a constant loop for the rest of December, alternating with "Walking in the air". I've got some reindeer in, and the Little Sisters of the Holy Herring have been trained to perform some beautiful country-dancing displays. So let's party!

Glad tidings and goodwill

The music feed piped through the Great House has now been officially tweaked to 100% Festive. We are using traditional incense-scented tea lights.  The aroma of the wine being mulled in the kitchen is being piped through the heating vents - which isn't interfering with the central heating, as we've switched it off to save money. Outside the hoar frost hangs beautifully on the hedgerows, the pigeons shiver in the naked trees and the rime is on the spray. When there is no cricket to watch, the DVD in the Room of Viewing is permanently on "It's a Wonderful Life". The dancing penguins and inflatable illuminated snowmen line the drive in perfect order. It is a perfectly Christmassy scene. And yet the Christmas spirit is not filling in my heart.

Afar off in St Bogwulf's Chapel I can already hear the thumps and shouts of pain, as Drayton once again attempts to learn to walk a tight-rope. For Drayton there is a hope. At the end of the pain and failure, there will be success. Or, at any rate, he can give up trying to walk on tight-ropes and the pain will stop. He has a purpose - a direction. Whereas here in the Great House we have no such direction. The days they turn into years, and still no tomorrow appears. Every day is lived in a perpetual "now" where the aim is to conjure up feelings of gladness, satisfaction, even - dare I say it - complacency. With no dragons to slay, no battles to fight, no races to run, we are free to live in the Moment - but can we stay there? Is the Moment worth living in?

Enough for now of this maudlin thinking. The Pouring out of Beakers is cancelled again and restlessness has broken out in the dining room. I must go and stop the porridge-fight and then I really must get somebody to clean out the Womble enclosure. You'd think of all animals they would be good at keeping their own living-quarters tidy, but they're the most awful messy pigs in their own back yards.

The inevitable seasonal answers

Yes, it is a bit taters this morning.
Parky? I should say so.
Well, personally I wouldn't refer to those parts of monkeys made from that alloy, but yes I see what you mean about the weather.
Yes, the sun did rise later this morning.
Quite right about how quickly it got dark last night.

No, you're not putting that on the roof. It's not even November. Grow up.

A sign of things to come

Three months today, then.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Sermon on the Santa - on the rising of the New Moon

I'm sure you've all noticed that there is an illuminated, inflatable Santa Clause outside the Great House.  It is supposed to sing "Santa Claus is coming to town" whenever anyone passes by.  But due to another unfortunate problem with translation in a workshop (in China, I suspect, rather than Lapland) it actually sings "Bring your daughter to the slaughter".  Oh well, these things are sent to try us.  

And if, like me, you are possessed of a certain ability to string events into a logical series, you'll have noticed that every night, when it is switched on, it is full of light and air, smiling happily at us and singing its entertaining 1980s ditty.  Whereas every day, it lays limp, dark and lifeless.  Unable to raise even the weakest ho-ho-ho.

And I think in a very real sense, we are all inflatable Santas.  When the Spirit fills us we radiate light and energy.  Yet when we are removed from the source of our power, we are sadly let down.  And yet - as Chumbawumba so memorably pointed out - although we get knocked down, we get up again.  And then.... for our natures are as the cycling of th'eternal Moon - we are once again laying on the floor next to the mouse that the cat caught last night.

But it need not always be like this.  Oh no.  For one day, we will in a very real sense be packed into a cardboard box and stuck back in the loft. 

Oh dear.... I really should have thought a bit harder about this one.  

Christmas (the thousandth parody)

The cash-tills in the Arndale ring
We’re putting up the tatty bling
Our glowing icicles of white
Have blown away the last of night
In suburbs, hamlets, village greens
And towns from Slough to Milton Keynes.

The reindeers glowing on the lawn
And round the bungalow the strings
of fairy lights in many colours
and many flashing, tasteless things
mean that the passers-by can say
“That’s rather naff” on Christmas day.

The Coca-Cola lorries blaze
and Marks and Spencers' pockets fill.
The Go-Go Hamsters safely graze
while Simon Cowell's puppets still
can dream of having festive fun
when they’re the Christmas number one.

And up the airport Christmas Eve
They’re flying from the winter rain
As bankers quick the City leave
To spend their bonuses in Spain
And Easyjets go crashing by
And blotting out the Luton sky.

And lads in flats wonder where’s dad?
And pregnant girls take after mum
And drunken office typists wretch
And dodgy blokes say to them “Come
and we will share a festive lark
in some side-alley quiet and dark."

But is it true, can it be true
This most unlikely tale of all,
Told in a garden-centre’s hue
a cabbage-patch doll in ox’s stall?
the Maker of the day and night
parodied under fluorescent light?

And is it true? For if it is
No fabricated Christmas songs
No bishop raging ‘gainst the sight
Of tinsel and Ann Summers thongs
The vomit outside heaving pubs
And midnight slammers in tatty clubs

No Wii Fit underneath the tree
No plastic game that lasts three days
No office party’s all-night spree
Can ever this great Truth erase –
Our God was born to take our pain,
And shares it, ever and again.

 
(with apologies to John Betjeman).

Failing to have an affair with the secretaries for Christmas

I'm not a happy bunny. Still stuck at the office, on a grey and miserable afternoon, and it's enough to drive a grown accountant to eggnog, I can tell you.

"What?" You are asking yourself, I can tell, gentle reader, "What's Burton Dasset - mild, positively to the degree of meekness, inoffensive, yet oddly attractive in an accountanty sort of way - what's Burton getting so upset about?"

Well, I'll tell you. I got back from lunch today to find that Stephanie and Angela, our secretaries (Stephanie claims to be a PA, but that would imply she's any assistance) - have decorated the office.

We're supposed to be a serious and professional practice. So I don't expect to sit at my desk of a dull Thursday in early December to discover that somebody has stuck a frog in a Santa hat onto the handset of my phone. Nor do I appreciate the tinsel that has so kindly been taped around my PC monitor. Or the three-foot Christmas tree that was placed on my desk - completely obscuring my "John Major 2009" calender. OK, there's only a month of wear left in it, but that's one twelfth of its total value. (Or slightly less, given the office closes over the Festive period). But whatever. I can't tell what the date is now unless I look at the other calender, on the wall. Or the calender in Outlook. Or on my phone or my watch, or in my Day-to-a-page desk diary. And I'm not happy. The polar bear stickers they've put on my keyboard make me angry as well. On the whole I don't need to look at the keys - the Archdruid always says I'm an expert touch typist, and that's why I have to do all the word-processing for the Community. But sometimes I forget where I am and have to look down and then ur fiwa xinokwrwkt qeibf,

And they've programmed my computer to play Christmas carols all day and all night.

And next Friday they're holding the office Christmas party and I've got to pay for half the drinks because I'm one of the bosses, and I know for a fact that they're going to get drunk and that in some circumstances it would be possible that I could end up in an embarrassing situation with either Stephanie or Angela - although in actually fact, surprisingly, neither of them has ever actually suggested such an idea at any of the last ten Christmas parties. Nor, since I put the notice up explicitly forbidding the practice, has anyone photocopied their bottoms or any other part of their anatomy. Except Angela photocopied her face last year, because she wanted to see what she looked like with her eyes closed.

And there's fake snow all over the windows, and a row of plastic Santas and snowmen and reindeers singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by the drinks machine. And paper chains hanging from the ceiling.

And you can guarantee that on Christmas Eve they're going to compound it by wandering down to the Plough at lunchtime, drinking slightly too much then coming back to work and sitting half-asleep at their desks and demanding I let them go home because who works on Christmas Eve anyway? And then they'll spend all of the break arguing with their families, breaking up with their boyfriends because they don't want marriage or children and come back in the New Year broke and hung over, a stone heavier and covered with spots from all those chocolates. And all this to celebrate the birth of a god they don't even believe in.

It makes me - well, "angry" is such an emotive term, don't you think? It makes me a bit tetchy, let's say. And if anyone says "Gord bless us one and all" once more - well, they'd just better not, that's all.

Darkness visible

All Beaker Folk are invited to attend this evening's Equinoctial Bonfire on the green.  And tomorrow night's.  And Thursday's.  We're going to keep driving the darkness away until the pallets run out.  And after that we'll just have to try whistling.

Autumn Equinox - that Sermon in full

Was it Kipling who referred to Autumn as "a time of mists and mellow fruitfulness"? Once again the Equinox has crept upon us, as we have pursued the ancient Beaker activities of picking blackberries, pressing cider, chopping wood and chasing Morris Men around the orchard with pointy sticks whenever they appear.
But I digress. This is a time to celebrate the fruit of the earth. The golden apples tell us of a time of the first light that Eden saw play. We dance in the dew of morning, before retreating for a mustard footbath to ensure we don't lower our resistance in this time of swine flu. We watch the rooks and seagulls as they follow the shining plough. And all the time we are aware that the year is drawing towards its death.

This is a time of balance. Of uncertainty. Of things being, and then yet not quite being after all. As of when a curtain is drawn and the outlines in the room become blurred - just before the police turn up. Do you feel it? Do you feel the sharpness in the air on a late September morning? The leaves as they hurtle to their doom - destined only for the cycle of decay and rebirth, decay and rebirth? Do you see the blight in the apple that thas been left too long? The wasps that infest the orchard all buzz out their message of desolation.
And every day the darkness grows. The sun rises a little further south, giving up the north to the powers of the dark. The darkness grows like a pool of ink, spreading out across the darkling hemisphere. The nights grow longer. We remember tales of ghosts and spirits, dragons and goblins.

Throw down your hi-viz! Why celebrate the darkness? Why embrace the despair and oppression? Why dance as the lights go out across the continent? The Dark! The Dark! Aaagggh!

(the Archdruid runs from her Sermoning Chair out into the fields).

More on balance

More on preparations for the Equinox.  Please for this special occasion can you all ensure you bring your beakers along on Tuesday.  As is appropriate for this time of year, beakers should be half full.  Or, if you're of a less optimistic disposition, half empty.

We'll leave it up to you what to half-fill your Beakers with (or what to half-empty them of), but acceptable possibilities are water from the Beaker Spring (which I can bless for a reasonable fee); mead; beer; milk; cider; Yoplait; olive oil.  Last year Orloff brought along a half-empty beaker of vodka, and didn't really play much of an active part in the ceremony at all.  So I'd suggest a maximum ABV should be in place.

Bobbing for Apples will form a large part in the festivities of welcoming the Autumn (or Fall, for our American Gibbon Moon contingent); but we're going to hold the pumpkin fight over until Samhain.

In search of perfect balance

And so we drift towards the Equinox.  The time when dark and light are equally matched.  The time when we start the long, inexorable plunge into darkness.  As the heat evaporates from the land and the light is withheld, we will be taking up our positions in the Orchard at 10pm on Tuesday Night for our six-monthly Celebration of Balance.

After Hnaef's plunge into the duck pond caused all those feathery fatalities in March, there will be no funambulism this year.  We will instead be lighting alternate tea lights, as a symbol of halfway-ness.  Everyone is to wear brown hi-viz - halfway between green and orange.  I know that the mere sight of it is enough to bring on feelings of nausea, but they are suitable for this time of year, and it's the only way I could flog them.  Meanwhile on the subject of suggestibility - does anyone have Darren Brown's number?  There are still four people stuck on their chairs.  We carried them out onto the lawn because it was getting so smelly inside, but we are concerned that even rain may not persuade them to move.