Spirituality – Meditations of Neilus Aurelius

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.’

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

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Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

As I write this meditation, the candle flickers in front of me through the painted glass of a small Christmas bowl. Painted around the bowl is a winter rural scene: farmhouses dripping with ice and a sleigh being pulled by horses in a snow drift lit by a half moon. I purchased it in Budapest and have given several others as Christmas gifts to friends and family. Candles in bowls would probably have been on Marcus’ table too as he wrote his Meditations or oil lamps of course.

The scene reminds me of the production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ which I mentioned in my last blog. We performed it in our studio theatre last week (to great success) and we used projected digital images to set the many scenes and to create the magical effects. One of the images was similar to the winter rural scene painted on my candle bowl.

In the play (and novel) Scrooge is taken by the Spirit of Christmas Past to revisit his old school days. This is where the image appeared as a backdrop. Scrooge says ‘Good heavens! I know this lane. And this is my old school!’ One of the most disconcerting experiences for Scrooge in the play is to have to witness scenes from his past and especially how he lost the love of his life, Bella, because of his addiction to creating wealth.

It would be disconcerting for us to have the opportunity to see ourselves as we once were. And to be forced to do so, as Scrooge is by the Spirit. Not only to see ourselves but also to observe our behaviour and hear what we said, especially in moments we would, like Scrooge, prefer to forget.

In the summer I experienced a little of that, when I was visiting family in Canada. My aunt Barbara has an obsession for photographs. She possesses dozens of albums from years ago. Every time I visit she gives me photos of the family or copies, for some are very precious to her. She left several in an envelope in my room this time.

One was a photo taken outside my parents’ house in Redcar. I am there standing in my school uniform with my father beside me. I must have been in the fifth year (Year 11) as we had a different uniform for the Sixth Form. I have a shock of black hair and a few discernible spots: the picture of adolescence! There I am with my trusty black brief case and a carrier bag of LP’s. Well it was 1970! I am barely smiling and I look self conscious as I never liked having my photo taken then. Photos were a rare occurrence: the age of the mobile phone camera and the selfie were a long way away. I look gauche. Lacking in self-confidence. Shy. Innocent. And I was then as I remember.

As I looked closely at the photo in my room in my aunt’s apartment on Vancouver Island I realised how far I had travelled. I was literally, physically thousands of miles away from Redcar in the North East of England and also thousands of miles away from myself as I

was then, aged 16. As I looked closely at my face I felt a sadness come upon me too. It was similar to the sadness that Scrooge feels as he witnesses his past again. Or at least, when I was watching Robert’s reactions as Scrooge in the scenes last week, I was reminded of the sadness I felt at that moment, looking at my 16 year old self in the photo in auntie’s apartment last summer.

As I looked at my young face, I thought about all the things that were going to happen to me afterwards, things I could never have predicted of course. And the sadness lingered a little. I didn’t have a very happy youth. And then I thought of those who befriended me and those who rescued me. And those who have stayed friends through all my life. And my family. And friends I didn’t know existed at the time (most of whom probably weren’t even born then). And all the places I never imagined visiting or living in then. All the places I never knew existed: like the house where I have lived for 25 years and my school where I have worked for 34. And I thought of my faith, through it all I kept my faith.

So I went out for a walk and sat on a bench looking out to the Pacific and the low grey mounds of the little islands in the ocean. And I had a Marcus moment. I recalled all my friends and their good qualities.

So the production was a success. My cast did become a company, indeed a little community, which is always my aim as a director (as I mentioned in a previous blog). And, (as I also mentioned in the same blog) the invisible ring between cast and audience was achieved I think, at least according to all the appreciative comments I have received from audience members. Even though we are a small oblong of a studio theatre and not a grand horseshoe-shaped opera house like Covent Garden. Despite the vicissitudes of all the scene changes in our 19 scene play, the actors and crew worked so well together, that I was able to enjoy the play a little from backstage and on the last night from the side of the audience too.

It goes without saying that a director sees the scenes over and over again in rehearsals and performance. It is a very special feeling to see performances grow in rehearsal and in performance and that is the real bonus for a director. Because of seeing scenes over and over again, there are individual scenes I can remember really well, moment by moment, even from years ago. And there are a few I’d rather forget of course! There are even certain lines, spoken by certain students, that I can hear in my mind. Maybe in my final moments on this earth, I shall hear them again at the last. (I hope that those of you reading this, who are my ex- Drama students won’t be bombarding me with texts and messages saying ‘Do you remember my scene? Do you remember my line?’!). There are several wonderful moments and speeches I am sure I will remember from my latest production.

But also, observing the play over and over again, a director realises aspects he hadn’t thought of. For instance, in rehearsal I began to realise that the real villain in the story is not Scrooge but Jacob Marley for it is young Marley who corrupts young Scrooge and leads him to become fixated on accumulating more wealth: ‘Business is business, Ebenezer.’

I have also realised that Scrooge (as an old man) begins the play as a person closed in on himself: ‘Secret and self-contained, as solitary as an oyster; warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.’ But by the end of the play, when he has learnt from observing his past, present and future, he opens himself up to everyone: ‘A Merry Christmas to everyone. A Happy New Year to the whole world!’

I hope and pray my own personal trajectory has been the same. This is the meaning of Christmas: to be open to everyone, not closed. It is the true open season.

Ave atque vale! Until the next blog.