A Festive Glimmer

A long awaited moment of peace for a postie at Christmas

A quiet moment, late on Christmas Eve. . .

The ‘children’ (Rob and guinea piggies, Bumble and Beatrice) were long bedded; the former sinking into a ‘deep and dreamless sleep’¹ after a hard week of delivering Christmas post and packages; the latter dreaming of the imminent arrival of ‘Santa Pig’ - a jolly, rotund Capybara with a sack full of tasty, gnawable goodies, borne on a mini sleigh drawn by a team of eighteen Patagonian maras, adorned with jingling bells. . .

“We’re not going to sleep, we want to wait up for Santa Pig!” Bumble (L) and Beatrice (R) with our dearly missed Tiffany (centre), taken a couple of years back

Even if I’m feeling really worn out, I always need a bit of time to wind down in the evening; unlike Rob who suddenly announces a non-negotiable state of tiredness and promptly pops off to bed! 😄 I’d no intention of being quite so late on Christmas Eve; I just wanted to enjoy a wee spell of peace and quiet before heading up to bed, to flop exhaustedly beneath the bedcovers. There were still cards to write (those delivered by hand, of course - us posties draw the line at working on Christmas Day!), there were still all the presents to wrap, and I still had to make the living room look a little more festive. . . Actually I should rephrase that - I wanted rather than ‘had’ to do all these things. But I knew that Yuletide for a pair of posties could never be enjoyed in the same way as those Christmases we used to know, in the rose-tinted years before Royal Mail. . .

This year I made it my intention to grasp festive glimmers whenever possible, and to prioritise rest above all other things, including cultural and familial expectations!

Such a glimmer came late on Christmas Eve. . .

Photo by Becky Fantham on Unsplash

By muted lamp and flickering candlelight, I exhaled onto the sofa with a mincemeat pie and spiced hot chocolate. It was at that moment I felt a sense of regret that I had hardly heard a single Christmas carol amidst the flashing lights of festive chaos, in the prolonged run up to the 25th. I’d had the joy of loudly trumpeting - parrrrrrrrrum pum pa-pa-pum, rum pum pa-pa-pum - when Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop the Cavalry’ burst onto the radio whilst driving my postie van, and once had to put my hand over my mouth to stop the trumpet solo from escaping my lips and reverberating around the aisles of Tesco. I’d ‘Stepped into Christmas’ with Elton John, discussed the believability of Father Christmas with Greg Lake, accompanied a spaceman called Chris de Burgh, who happened to be visiting a newborn child, and danced around ‘Underneath the Tree’ with Kelly Clarkson. . . but. . .

So far I’d not yet sought out and played my favourite carols: ‘Gaudete,’ ‘O Holy Night’ and probably my all time favourite, the beautifully dark and melancholic ‘Coventry Carol (Lully, Lullay, Thou Little Tiny Child).’ A sixteenth century lullaby, with a twist. . . a lament for the murdered infant victims of King Herod’s ruthless ‘Massacre of the Innocents.’ 😮

I’ve always found it strange that Christmas songs and carols abruptly stop being played, sung and listened to after Christmas Day itself. Surely there are at least ‘Twelve Days of Christmas,’ so why does it feel so wrong to listen to them come Boxing Day and thereafter? 🤔 I was running out of time!

Approaching midnight. . .

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

I knew that it must be getting very close to Christmas Day, so quietly, very quietly I searched my library on Apple Music to find something to play before midnight arrived. There was only one piece of music which to me encapsulated the taut expectation of Christmas Eve, wrought with the dark perils of midwinter, all woven together with a deep uneasy charm. . . an uneasy charm which pricks at the hairs on the back of your neck and tingles your spinal cord. If you don’t know this piece already, you must listen to it!

In the mid-eighties an extract from the third movement of Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony, was used as the theme tune for the BBC’s adaptation of the The Box of Delights by John Masefield.² The movement begins with a wistful descent into the Coventry Carol and slowly morphs into, at first the timid, then full blown triumph of the First Nowell.

John Masefield Society

The gossamer tightrope-like transition between the two very different carols was the musical moment which I had been craving - most fitting for the last minutes of Christmas Eve. I pressed play. . . silence. . . then the sound of violins very softly, tentatively holding their high pedal note. . . and then it began: the harp plucking its eerie, ethereal theme on repeat, like an enchanted musical box. I looked at the time. . . midnight on the dot.

Stealing outside the front door, I felt Christmas tiptoe its way into the dead of night, amidst freezing fog. It truly was a silent night, broken only by the quiet, haunting melody emanating from my phone. All time appeared to be suspended in this moment, as if I’d stepped outside of time itself, however briefly. At once I sensed a connection with all the other years I had stepped outside, curiously it seems, almost always into freezing fog and stillness. This was Yule magic at its most potent, offering a glimpse of something which seemed to be just out of reach. . . yet filling me with a sense of peace and hope. . . and magic.

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

This was my late night festive glimmer - understated, intimate and satiating. I needed nothing more.

Then it was time to sally forth into Christmas Day, trachling,³ postie-weary, upstairs to bed, to join Rob in ‘deep and dreamless sleep.’ 😴

‘Stop the Cavalry’ by Jona Lewie

‘Step into Christmas’ By Elton John

‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ by Greg Lake

‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’ by Chris de Burgh

‘Underneath the Tree’ by Kelly Clarkson

‘Gaudete’ sung by Steeleye Span

‘O Holy Night’ sung by Nat King Cole

‘The Coventry Carol’ sung by The Sixteen

Hely-Hutchinson’s ‘Carol Symphony: III Andante quasi lento e cantabile’ performed by Deutsch Radio Philharmonie & Pietari Inkinen

1. ‘. . . the silent stars go by’ from ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ by Phillips Brooks.

2. The theme tune had also been used in earlier radio adaptations of the book.

BAFTA winning BBC TV The Box of Delights, was broadcast between 21st November and 24th December, 1984. Both Rob and I LOVED watching this at the time and enthusiastically revisited it a couple of year’s ago to find it. . . bizarre, strange and confusing! I persevered, approaching it with the open mind of a child, working hard to suspend my disbelief and accept whatever image sequences followed. Sometimes the adult brain asks too many logical questions; so much so that it ends up getting in its own way and tripping over itself - literally losing the plot! 😄

3. ‘A weary struggle.’