Christmas is coming; the geese are getting fat,

Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat.

If you have not got a penny a ha’penny will do,

If you haven’t got a ha’penny then Dieu bless you.

The rhyme raised a note of cynicism in me. I remember an early advert for American Express, I think, offered as payment in a restaurant: ‘That will do nicely Sir’. You can imagine the man in the hat’s reply to ‘Do you take cards?’ Anyway, inevitable reaction each Christmas, now worse due to the TV screen, scenes of horrendous suffering interspersed by ads for mountains of unsuitable but tempting food (it amuses my cynical nature that at the bottom of the screen is a health warning, less sugar, less fat, more veg, more exercise). 

Is this year worse? Or is it my reaction. I watched a French programme of decorating your house. A woman had just pad £3,000 to a professional just for her sitting and dining room decorations.  This month’s Philosophe magazine (French) is all about vices, one of which is gluttony. One is guilty at having excess, and affording, so much to eat, I am spending money at a hotel, but I have to have light, music and younger people, last year I was seriously depressed. I often rue being a historian and statistician. Reading my own book, only thing I have, set at the end of the 16th century, all true, events and families. The wars of religion had ended, but crops had been ruined or not sown, the weather was awful, people workless and starving. Their overlords were rich and powerful and did nothing to help. Fast forward. The Poldark series, set two centuries later. Same scenario, war, starving, lack of work (Cornish tin mines) rich landowners, corrupt politicians.

Now there are more wars, gap between rich and poor wider, even in the ‘rich’ countries. France is estimated to have 10 million people who struggle to have enough to eat. The UK is estimated to have nearly 5,000 homeless people, food banks are increasing. I worked a couple of years with Crisis at Christmas, then in a disused church, now a major organisation. How about assuaging one’s guilt, one less box of chocolates, use last year’s Christmas decorations. Only £29 will give somebody hot meals and a Christmas dinner. Inviting somebody to share your feast is fraught, neighbours invited us once when we were alone, it was awful, their family resented us and showed it.

We have had some fabulous Christmases, family home to exotic places. Nothing can match those spent with the organisations as shown in the photograph. Hundreds of thousands of Indians live on the streets. Those children were abandoned, abused, sent out to beg, two saw their parents murdered. We spent Christmas with them, giving group presents which were not costly to us but treasure to them. That year was artistic materials, nuns as excited as children. Ignore my Scrooge tendencies, please, and enjoy Christmas, wherever you are. 

The Gardener

A Moodscope member