Tag: Christmas

As I sit here by my solitary candle, I am not gazing at its steady flame but at the lights on my Christmas tree, which is standing in the corner of the lounge opposite me.

Christmas is my season. I suppose now that I have white hair and a beard of sorts and have begun to look ‘Santa-esque’, it should be my favourite season. I have certainly always preferred it to the forced festivities of New Year.

Even though I live alone and spend most of Christmas week with my family up North, I still decorate my lounge and make a lot of fuss over the tree. On my travels in recent years I have collected trinkets and baubles to adorn its branches. Every year I try to put the decorations up around the first Sunday of Advent (generally the first Sunday in December) and leave them up until the official end of Christmastide (the feast of Epiphany on January 6). They are a cheering sight in these bleak and dark days of winter, especially when I arrive home from my family after my Christmas visit, to my solitary residence again.

Last week I took a friend to the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It is a tall townhouse in Doughty Street, in Bloomsbury, not far from Russell Square. The house was the first marital home of Charles and Catherine Dickens. They lived there from 1837 – 1840 and during that short space of time, raised the first three of their ten children there (Charley, Mary and Kate). There Dickens finished ‘The Pickwick Papers’, wrote ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. And it was there, in his late-twenties, that he very quickly rose like a comet to international fame.

Though now a museum, there is a homely atmosphere as you walk through its rooms. There are also mini exhibitions on display and, as might be expected, at present, there is one on ‘A Christmas Carol’ which Dickens wrote only a few years after he moved (in 1843). This is the best time of year to visit the museum as every room is festooned with Christmas decorations in early Victorian style, including, in the corner of the parlour, a Christmas tree. I am honoured to think that my own tree is likewise in the corner of my own parlour! The tree’s branches have colourful ribbons on them and small thin candles (tapers) . There were no flashing electric lights in those days or electric light at all and in the gloom of the parlour, lit only by candles or oil lamps and the fire in the grate, the tree’s candle lights must have been as warm and spectacular as our own electric ones are now.

Charles Dickens virtually invented Christmas, through ‘A Christmas Carol’ and his other annual Christmas stories.

However he was only bringing together traditions that had existed for years before, even if some may have declined by then. Just as Shakespeare created our image of Ancient Rome in his play ‘Julius Caesar’, so Dickens, in his novel, creates the heartwarming image of Christmas that is now indelibly etched in our national (indeed international) consciousness.

However, we must remember that he wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ spurred on by his own acute social conscience. Ever the champion of the poor, as he was only a few steps from abject poverty himself in his childhood, it was the plight of children born into poverty that abhorred him most. At the centre of the book is the scene where the Spirit of Christmas Present, as he is about to leave Scrooge, opens his cloak to reveal the children of Ignorance and Want, who beset Scrooge with outstretched hands.

The book was written in Dickens’ despair at the conditions of children living on the London streets and on the streets of other major cities, heightened by the current economic depression known as the ‘Hungry Forties’, where the failure of two successive harvests left many walking the streets in starvation. He was also sickened by the use of child labour in the mines and rather than petition Parliament, he decided to write a short work of fiction instead, exposing the ignorance of the wealthy and powerful classes to the ‘want’ of the poor.

What would Dickens have to say about our own Christmas in 2019 with its own child poverty, a growing homeless population, food banks, ineffective universal credit scheme, and children slipping into drug abuse and knife crime? And successive governments that are not ignorant but refuse to see and act. What indeed?

And what would he make of the last three years of political machinations and parliamentary drama around Brexit? He would have seen huge opportunities for comedy I am sure. And what of our new Prime Minister? Dickens loved creating eye-catching names for his characters and took his time over inventing them. I fancy he might have dubbed him ‘Mr Boris Brexit Bombast’. And yet, having seen our new leader so often in the news recently, despite his attempts to be Churchillian, he does not appear to be a 19th Century Dickensian figure either, as his voice and manner are more those of a licentious 18th Century Tory. Indeed a periwig would sort out his uncontrollable hair.

Dickens wrote a story about a Christmas Tree, which he calls the ‘new German toy’ as the practice of a tree at Christmas had been introduced into our country by the German Prince Albert, the young Queen Victoria’s consort, a few years before. His tree has ‘glittering tapers’ (like the one in the museum), miniature doll’s furniture and musical instruments, imitation fruits and sweets and a host of other trinkets, including rosy-cheeked dolls hiding behind the green leaves.
What of my own tree? Yes there is a string of lights like glowing icicles and a host of different baubles and trinkets, some purchased here and many from my travels. I must admit to an aversion to Christmas trees in stores, bars or hotels that have identical baubles: all gold or blue or red or whatever and often with fake gift boxes at their base. They look so unimaginative and half-hearted. But better a tree than no tree at all I suppose.

In the Dickens story, as he looks at the tree he is gradually reminded of ghosts from the past. What am I reminded of? Well places that I have visited and the dear friends who were with me. I have decorations from Paris, Rome, Florence, Assisi, Venice several from Budapest of course, San Francisco and other places in California like Monterey, San Simeon and L.A. and Vancouver. There are even several from the Vatican – but I didn’t steal them! And there are those that were given to me by family and friends. And, like Dickens, one or two trinkets remind me of one or two friends who are no more.
The Christmas Tree is a light bearing tree. To those of us who are of the Christian Faith, it symbolised the coming of Christ into the world, the light that lightens all people. For Dickens it is a ‘commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion’ reminding us to think of others and help them at this time.

The evergreen fir tree has links with the winter solstice and so to the tree of life which is common to so many faiths and cultures. So the Christmas tree is also the Tree of Life. It is a perennial symbol of light in the darkness. And of hope too.
As I look at my own tree I see all those things. Yes my tree is a tree of life. My life.

As Tiny Tim says in ‘A Christmas Carol’:
‘Merry Christmas and God bless us everyone.’


If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here with a candle before me as usual, I am not gazing at its flame but at the darkness in the room that surrounds it. One of the advantages of using an I Pad to write is that it has an illuminated screen so I am able to compose this meditation without the benefit of an electric light above or beside me. Indeed, I hardly need a candle at all to see the keyboard.

Marcus, of course, all those centuries ago, would have had to resort to candles or oil lamps to write his own meditations. His own tablet would not have been lit from within as mine is! I am sure that, like me, he must have gazed into the darkness between writing down his sentences. Perhaps the darkness helped him to get his own thoughts together too. Alternately gazing at the candle flame and at the gloom, at the light and at the darkness, he was able to shape his thoughts into sentences.

One thing is certain: he would have been far more aware of the dark than we are. We never need to be completely in the dark with electric lights everywhere and TV and computer screens beaming at us, not to mention the little screens forever in our hand. With all these sources of light, we hardly notice the passage of the night hours at all unless we are unable to sleep for some reason. But Marcus would have been more aware of the night hours, the hours of darkness.

Perhaps he wrote because he slept little. I read in Mary Beard’s recent book about Rome, that the city’s inhabitants slept little at all, because of fear of fire and violence outside their dark and flimsy wooden dwellings. Perhaps Marcus’ legionaries enjoyed being free of that fretful city fear as they camped out in the stillness of the fields and plains, in those moments when they were far from the lurking enemy.

It is humbling to sit in the dark. It reminds us of our place in the universe, in the cosmic order of things; that there is a vast immensity beyond our own paltry private world of nagging individual concerns. Looking up into the night sky, especially in the summer when we can sit in the warmth of the evening to gaze up at the stars, can help us to appreciate this. But sitting in a room in the dark can bring this home to us too.

Technology in its myriad forms has, I think, made us proud and arrogant as if we are in total control and lords of creation and of course we are not in total control. News of a natural disaster is enough to remind of this. And our slapdash intermittent control of creation has resulted in disastrous results for our fragile and vulnerable Eco systems, which we are now only too aware of.

We are most aware of the dark in the wintertime because it creeps in suddenly during the late afternoon and is still there when we wake up in the morning. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Christmas is so wonderful: it is a season of light, of cheer, of conviviality; of bright lights and comforting company against the ever-encroaching dark. For we do all have that primal fear of the dark inside us. You only have to walk down a country lane with no street lights at night or across an open field in the dark to experience a twinge of that primal fear; to share that gut feeling those Roman city dwellers must have had at times. Especially if you are unable to get a signal on your phone!

A few days ago there was another attack by a lone terrorist in the London Bridge area. Darkness has suddenly crept into our lives again accompanied by that primal fear. Except it was the darkness within that terrorist’s soul that took over him and then his victims and so us. Darkness is always with us.

The future of our country is in the balance with an election looming and the ever-present uncertainty caused by Brexit. We are walking towards the future in the dark. But then we always are walking towards the future in the dark. We really do not know what is around the corner. Perhaps part of our anxiety or annoyance about this is because technology, as I mentioned earlier, surreptitiously makes us believe we have all knowledge at our fingertips, that we are omniscient, all knowing. Therefore we should know everything about the future and certainly the media and politicians want us to believe their version of it. But we need to remember that we are in the dark and to accept the dark and cherish what light we have.

I am now sitting in a room away from home. I am staying overnight in my old Oxford college, Pembroke. My room overlooks the chapel quad. It is one of my favourite views so I am so pleased that I have been allocated this room. It is night and very dark in the quad as I look out of the window but there are lamps shining in brackets from the walls.The walls were a biscuit brown in the winter sunshine when I arrived, but now they are a pale grey, not eerie but welcoming. From the darkness in my room, those lamps look so comforting, especially the one immediately opposite me, lighting the stairway to the Hall. It is no longer a lamp but a beacon in the gloom.

That is what we are called to be: beacons in the gloom, comforting each other and hopefully guiding each other. That is what the two young victims of the London Bridge attack, Jack and Saskia, were. They were beacons in the gloom; working on a prison rehabilitation programme to create a little light in the darkness of the lives of others. They were what the poet W.H.Auden would call ‘affirming flames’.

Darkness and light are incompatible. I am reminded of a quote in my first meditation over a year ago. It is by St Francis of Assisi: ‘All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light from one candle.’

Let us believe this in our dark times and like, Jack and Saskia, be affirming flames.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!
And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.
A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.
I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.
Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

Now I have returned from Budapest and I am writing this beside the steady flame of my customary candle. The Cafe Dumas on the Danube embankment, where I last wrote to you, dear reader, seems far, far away now. My travels are over for a while and I am ‘home for good and all’ as Fan, the boy Scrooge’s sister, says to him, when she comes to the boarding school to take him home for Christmas. But I should not be mentioning Christmas yet as we are only into September!

While I was away, I did not spend all my time in Budapest. I went with friends out of the city several times. One of the places I visited was Esztergom, in Upper Hungary, which, like Budapest, is on the river Danube. You can look down on Slovakia on the other side of the river from an elegant promenade. This is behind the imposing Basilica, the largest church in Hungary and one of the largest in Europe, and the remains of the Royal Palace. For Esztergom was where the Hungarian Kings first lived before the royal residence was moved to the Buda hills overlooking Pest. St Stephen, their first King was crowned there and baptised into the Christian Faith on Christmas Day 1000.

Centuries earlier, according to my guide book, it was also where Marcus Aurelius had an army encampment during the Romans’ reign over the territory. It was here, on the banks of the river Hron, which runs into the Danube, that Marcus wrote his Meditations. Sadly I did not have time to write one of my own there myself. I did discern a quietness and stillness about the castle area and the town, however, which was conducive to reflection.

It is that stillness and quietness of the towns we visited that impressed me most, aside from some beautiful buildings and piazzas large and small. As I sit here by my candle it is is the lamps that I remember: ornate and brilliant, beaming on stucco walls of yellow ochre, pink, grey, green and blue.

I was staying at my friend Adam’s apartment in the Taban district of Budapest at the back of the Royal Palace. Behind the block is a road where he parks his car with the Palace towering above it on the other side. There are similar lamps all along the road in the walls, elegant and warmly inviting, making me feel at home as I get out of the car. They remind me of the lamps in chapel quad at Pembroke, my Oxford college. I didn’t notice them much when I was an undergraduate there but I do now when I occasionally return.

Yes it was the lamps that I noticed as I sat one evening in the main square of Szekesfehervar, with my friends and a glass of wine. They slowly became brighter as the twilight faded into evening, their beams warming the yellow stucco walls until in the darkening sky, the square became blanketed in one incandescent comforting glow.

The great French novelist Marcel Proust commented in his masterpiece about memory ‘In Search of Lost Time’ that he would like life to be a series of happy afternoons. For myself, I would like life to be a series of mellow twilights. I image that Marcel was thinking of summer afternoons and I am certainly thinking of summer twilights, for it is only in summer that afternoons and twilights seem to stretch forever.

The square was quiet and quite still with a relaxed atmosphere. There was the low hum of conversation and music playing somewhere, perhaps in another street. The square was pedestrianised so children were running about, playing with their cycles and with water in a fountain.

People were quietly enjoying the evening and each other, sitting in the cafes and restaurants dotted about the square. There I was, in a town in Central Europe, enjoying the peace and quiet of a twilight evening. “Isn’t this what people really want?’ I reflected. To lead peaceful quiet lives enjoying being with their partners, their lovers, their friends,their children; enjoying being with each other? Life can be difficult enough after all. Is not this what the so called ‘European project’ is all about? It is not the ‘European project’ but the ‘European Peace.’ A peace we have shared somehow and not without problems. for seven decades and with which we have also embraced our ex-Soviet block neighbours. In abandoning the European project we should take care not to abandon the European peace.

‘The lamps are going out all over Europe’, said Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary at the start of the First World War. We must do our utmost to make sure they do not got out again.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius