Celebrating Susiemas/ Redefining Yule

OK, I am afraid it’s looking a bit like we’re not going to be able to escape it. Very soon it will be Christmas, and Christmas does bad things to good people. I myself blame the John Lewis advert, which I think is a subtle plot to make anyone who does not have a middle class family who all like each other feel bad about themselves, and which this year is even worse. The Christmas Pressure madness does different things to us all: for some of us it makes us crochet epic things until we get a crick in our neck which makes us look like Quasimodo: for my mother, it makes her embark on a Quest to Rediscover The Spiritual Side of Christmas.

Light in darkness, quod est demonstrandum

This is a challenge for my mother as she is, how shall I say this, utterly Godless: however, in past years the quest has taken her to carol services in various churches, the nadir of which was when she forced other members of my family to attend a carol service in a chapel which was smaller than their front room, and where everyone had to hug each other afterwards. There was also the incident at Midnight Mass which we do not discuss. Luckily, this year I am here with my one-size-fits-all, spiritual-yet-secular guide to the True Meaning of Christmas which will enable you not only to not have that nagging feeling as you stand in M&S bitchslapping a woman in a cardigan over the last vol-au-vents that you ought to be doing something a bit more uplifting, but which will also enable you to celebrate Christmas in whatever way you choose. Want to hole up all on your own with a bottle of vodka and the cat? That would work. Want to spend every night from now until 2nd Jan in a feast of Rabelaisian excess culminating in you climbing Reality Checkpoint without your pants and hooting? Perfect. Here we go.

Right {cracks fingers}. The thing that happens at Christmas/ Yule/ Winterval, whatever cultural or religious associations you want to lay on it, is, that it is the darkest part of the winter, and the time when the sun is reborn at the solstice, i.e. the days get no shorter and indeed start to get a bit longer (OK, that bit is a bit pagan, but bear with me). Now we all have central heating (although a lot of us now have fuel poverty as well so, you know) this might have lost its emotional charge, but, really, we are one scant generation away from when central heating was not standard and we spent all winter being really cold.

I don't believe there's anything more Christmassy than a reindeer in earmuffs

In my Northern childhood I remember (violins) frost forming patterns on the inside of the window when I got up in the morning. I remember having to stand over the tiny portable heater to get dressed. I remember having a ceramic hot water bottle (I can’t believe we couldn’t afford a rubber one, but, there you go). It was the kind of cold we only feel these days when the boiler breaks or we can’t afford the heating. Just think what a cold, hard, painful, long grind the winter would have been in days gone by, nowadays we worry about the central heating drying out our sinuses or making the cat a bit static, before, we would have been eyeing up Granny hacking up a lung and wondering if she would get through until March, and, if not, who else had the skill to reroof the hovel. So in those circumstances, the light coming back – the spark of life of the new year, the first day the sun went down later rather than earlier – would have been a cause for marvellous celebration. In fact, the festivities might have propelled Granny through it a bit, rather than everyone sitting being miserable and cold.

So what you are celebrating at Susiemas (oh, come on. Let me try to start a cult if I want to) is, the return of the light. In fact it is more than a celebration, it is an act of faith. It is a shot in the dark. It is an assertion of light and joy at the most miserable time. It is saying, although this is the darkest time of the year, I believe that light will return. One day it will be summer. And I am calling back the light in a metaphorical way with tinsel, candles, parties, nice food, or, by sitting on my own with a bottle of vodka, whatever way you want. Now, isn’t that better than all the depressing cultural overlay? You can celebrate however you want! Sod the turkey! Sod the Eastenders Christmas Special! Sod getting drunk on sherry and fighting off questions from Great-Aunty Mildred about why you aren't married yet/ your children aren't like the John Lewis one/ how you failed to become an actuary! Sod giving people chocolates and then getting them back next year with one of the chocolates eaten! (Yes – this did happen to my mother). I myself celebrate Yule, so, we call the sun back by burning a candle (that is the spiritual bit), and I am also going to get up at dawn to greet the new sun (I believe dawn to be at something like 7:45 am, though, so don’t be too impressed. And I’m going to greet it by sitting on our bench drinking a cup of coffee, I’m not going dancing about skyclad). Let’s have new traditions! What do you do?