When I was a child in London in the 1950s we had pea soup fogs, coal fires, visible lumps of soot landing on my Dads car while I was washing it, and burning candles on our Christmas tree. Now the London air is clear but the tree lights are electric.
We lived in an aristocratic, 18th century London town house. Fanny Burney, the diarist, wrote of meeting the famous Dr Johnson in our living room. The ceiling was probably twelve feet high and the tree almost touched it. It stood where I imagined Dr. Johnson had sat. We decorated it with glass balls, hidden deep inside to reflect light mysteriously, straw stars given us by Scandinavian friends, and wild silver stars an artist made for my mother, whose name was Stella. It was the candles that made it magic about fifty of them, in tin candleholders clipped to the twigs. We sat in the candlelight singing carols or hushed in awe. I was shortsighted and loved to take off my glasses and gaze at the fuzzy balls of light on the tree: it was peaceful and wondrous.
It was my job as a child to see to the safety of the tree. I kept a bucket of water and a mop behind the tall red curtains in case things got out of hand. I was very proud that my father trusted me with the whole house and the dozen or so lives it held.
Our house slept sixteen to twenty, and was usually full. Thats where my Christmas-card picture of old aristocratic England morphs into something less clichéd. My parents and everyone living with us were full-time, unpaid workers in an energetic religious movement, which went by the name of the Oxford Group or Moral Re-Armament. Some people today know of the Oxford Group as the movement out of which Alcoholics Anonymous grew. It was well known in England then, and controversial its detractors called it a cult, many people on the left (mistakenly) called it fascist, and I cant deny that it was homophobic and puritanical. Maybe not so different from the evangelical America that many liberals fear and disdain today. But inside, it was often beautiful and fun, and never more so than at Christmas.
For me as a child, there was no disconnect between the Christmas of the presents (the one people bemoan today as materialistic), and the holy Christmas of the Christ child. I never liked the story of the crucifixion, but for me the story of the holy baby was tender, warm, and hope-filled. We didnt have much money in fact the house, its furnishings and even the tree were all gifts to the movement from its supporters. Unsalaried, my parents lived on a small private income of my mothers and mostly on faith and prayer, which meant the contributions of supporters. Our carols were sung with true Christian fervour.
Why the gifts to support us in a house that looked like an embassy? My father managed a West End theatre dedicated to putting on the movements plays, which were designed to change lives. But even our home was theatre a demonstration of our way of life and a place to host large parties going on to the theater itself. The house had a front side for the gracious hospitality, and a backstage where we scurried around cooking, cleaning. From around the age of 10 I became expert at running the dishes and cutlery from a dinner for fifty or so through the dishwasher in our tiny pantry.
Everything at home was evangelism, including the fact that we eschewed pious or churchy words like evangelism. We were life-changers and my home was one of the nets we set to catch the leaders of our country: politicians, businessmen, labour leaders, churchmen, and influential women. We tried to change ordinary folks too, but it wasnt for them we needed the 18th-century mansion.
Christmas, though, was like a break from putting on the show. We could relax, sing, eat and watch the tree. One reason was that my two oldest bachelor uncles always came to stay. For a few days, for their sakes, any overt evangelism was suppressed. They were not members of the movement. Uncle Ted actually hated it. Your father only married your mother for her money! he would whisper fiercely to me. But he always came. Probably because when my grandmother had been dying in our home, my mother persuaded her to put Ted back in her will. So my parents had forgone money they would have had if they were the graspers Ted thought them.
After the turkey at Christmas dinner, my mother would call me out to the pantry. We never drank alcohol but she bought duty-free brandy for this moment. She heated brandy in a ladle until it ignited. Then she poured it over the hot Christmas pudding. I bore the pudding enveloped in blue flames into the darkened dining room and placed it before my father on the huge table. He scooped out the first serving as fast as he could and thrust it before Uncle Ted, who attempted to get a spoonful of still burning pudding into his mouth. He usually made it. The old curmudgeon often got the silver sixpence hidden in the pudding as well. I wonder if my father, knowing how much Ted liked money, engineered it.
My wife and I are cultural Christians now: we love the carols but dont believe the Christ child was God. Much is gained but something is lost when Truth becomes myth, as when candles become fairylights. Life is safer, stories less weirdly powerful. I sometimes wish my teenage son could have those experiences I had. But with no video games or music downloads, and that much piety and washing up, I know hed prefer what hes got. And he has once or twice got a piece of pudding into his mouth still flaming.
