CUTTING THROUGH THE TINSEL

CHRISTMAS is coming, the shopkeeper's getting fat, but Mary Kenny has been trying lo battle against Mammon and restore the real meaning of Christmas with her family. Here's her report from the front line.
ON AUGUST 25 this year, my small son said to me: "I'm glad it will be September soon." I brightened. Perhaps, after all, we had the makings of a scholar here: September signifies the new school year.
"And why'?" I asked expectantly.
"Because." quoth he. "we will then be getting ever so near to Christmas! Christmas, and toys, and Santa Claus and all the decorations and — and — and
Indeed, Christmas cards appear in the shops in late September in London. All those invidious adverts for hugely expensive toys creep into the TV adverts between the children's programmes by the middle of October.
And then. before we know where we are, we are in the middle of it: the great moneyspending commercial feast of Yule as we have now come to know it.
I gritted my teeth; determined not to be railroaded into any such hysteria. Christmas should be simple, traditional and a spiritual feast. But much of the time, it's an uphill struggle against Mammon.
In Molly Hughes's charming memoirs of a London childhood in the 1870s — a book recently reissued in paperback — she recalls that in the 19th century, family preparations for Christmas began the week before December 25. Nobody even thought about it until around the 17th or 18th of that month.
If you were going to send cards or letters, you sent them out a few days beforehand; as the Royal Mail worked rather better in Victoria's day than it does today, that posed no posting problems. Gilts and trinkets were modest. or most people. and did not require endless lists and preparations.
The decoration of the tree was done on Christmas Eve, and the high point for many folks was a session of carol-singing.
In my own childhood, in Ireland in the 1950s, the only preparations for Christmas that were done somewhat in advance were the making of the cake and plum pudding, The ritual of the plum pudding was — and still is — a fascinating one. The plum pudding and cake were prepared, naturally, by the women of the house, and there was a tradition that the men were not allowed into the kitchen during the serious preparations; hut everyone in the family must stir the plum pudding mixture at least once. And then Advent started, which was, of course. a miniLent, with its days of fasting and the retreat or mission made at the local church. Difficult to look on Advent as a mini-Lent in today's climate; nowadays all the Christmas parties are held before Christmas; difficult to fast and pursue prayerful retreats when the annual office or factory binge beckons all workers to rejoice and be joyful two weeks before Christmas takes place at all.
In most families today, longterm preparations really do begin in August or September simply because Christmas has become so expensive that people find it easier to spread their spending over that three-monthly period.
"1 begin my Christmas shopping in the summer holidays," says one young mother. "That way, you can pick up a little gift here and a little gift there and gradually stock up; it's less ruinous than doing it all at the last minute when you buy out of panic."
For the women of the household — and heaven knows the practical burdens of Christmas preparations still fall almost entirely on women — the gradual stock of gifts for children and members of the family are the first things to be crossed off the lists.
The cake and the plum pudding have to be thought about in October, and executed in November; and this year I am taking the easy way out — pressing my mother into service to make the cake and unashamedly buying the plum pudding from a good grocer (I larrods.) I am sure I shall miss something of the ritual in not making the pudding myself, but there are just too many other things to think about: the card list, the decoration list, the ordering of the turkey, the Christmas tree, the endless sheets of wrapping paper, the stocking-Idlers.
And then there is the laying-in of food, for Christmases today are like preparing for living conditions under siege: all shops are going to be shut down for all the twelve days, and you need enough baked beans and fish fingers to get you through that lot.
Another thing: most of the prudent mothers I know have already booked up for Christmas shows and pantomimes; again, if you leave it until the last moment, only the expensive seats are left, An immense emotional conflict for younger couples can be — who do you spend Christmas with? His folks or her folks? Or do you have them all to your home? Claims and counterclaims are made about whose turn it is to go where.
In the midst or that, one can't help reflecting on the plight of people who have nowhere to go, no homestead at all to choose. Depression and suicide is at its zenith at Christmas time, as the Samaritans will tell you. Christmas evokes painful or nostalgic memories of childhood, bringing to the surface all sorts of griefs otherwise buried.
I'm afraid family murders also take an upturn during the season of goodwill; ten days closeted with one's own family can bring out the beast in people.
The troubling thing about the run-up to Christmas is that it is all so crass and worldly, and seems, so mcuh of the time, the exact antithesis of what it is all supposed to be about. Instead of the joys of giving, the pleasures of greed; instead of the sweetness of union, the quarrels and fights: -He's got
a better toy than me. it's not fair!" It's the high point of the year for alcohol intake, too, and the only time when hard liquor is allowed to be advertised on TV: so the country is awash with drink and its abuse — not a pretty sight. Trying to get Christmas in perspective is a heck of a difficult job for many Christian families.
Nevertheless. we are told by no less an authority than Taller that barometer of social trends, that the traditional family Christmas is on the way back. "A noticeable swing back to the traditional family Christmas is • to be perceived this year," this chic publication tells us. People are fed up with all this pagan materialism and long for a return to the proper rites and significance of the birth of Jesus Christ.
And it's heartening to notice that even with a generation of young children bombarded with TV advertising about the things they should expect for Christma,s that this message still gets through. It is fascinating to sec how entranced they still are by the sight of the Christmas crib and by the story of the child in the manger.
For the past two years, with a small group of other mothers, I have been helping to run a creche at our church where young children can learn about Christianity while their parents are at Mass, and the undoubted high point of the year is at Christmas; I realised the meaning of the cliche that "Christmas is for children" when I saw that the child identifies intensely with the Child in the manger.
The words of those Christmas hymns still, thankfully, mean more to the kids than all the awful TV jingles they know off by heart; and the poverty, the homelessness and the isolation of Joseph and Mary in their journey to that manger is very, very meaningful. This must not be dismissed as sentimentality: in the deepest sense of the word, it is absolutely real.
The family preparing for Christmas can scarcely avoid being caught up in all the day-today preparations and organisation. For women especially. now, it probably means more work than ever before just because most mothers no longer have grannies and aunties and sisters to help them in an extended family circle the way it once was.
'there are a million things to keep in mind, from tipping the dustman to the delicate preparation of the brandy butter, from the holly and the mistletoe to the vague worries about the pipes being lagged sufficiently well to prevent bursting at a time ' when plumbers charge the earth. But the most rewarding part of it is still in the heart of the matter, revealed to you in the voice of the child singing joyfully: "And man shall live for ever more, because of Christmas Day."