The Idler’s Christmas
Rushed off your feet this festive season? Tom Hodgkinson – aka The Idler – counsels us to remember the tradition of winding down and making merry
Professional idler Tom Hodgkinson reminds us to kick back and relax this season
As Christmas looms, the last thing on our minds
is sitting around doing nothing. Christmas requires a lot of frantic rushing and stress: dashing around the shops buying presents, bustling about putting up decorations, worrying about food and getting anxious about family rows. Somewhere out there, we are encouraged to believe, is the ‘ perfect’ Christmas, and it’s going to take a lot of money and work to achieve the dream. This is a shame, because the real point of Christmas is to take a rest, to feast and dance. Christmas takes place when the nights are longest and the ground is coldest. In the old days it made sense to throw a massive party at a point when it was just not possible to work outdoors. ‘ Winter is the farmer’s lazy time,’ Virgil wrote. It is the time for staying in by the fire and warming our bellies with spiced wine. In the 1930s, journalist GK Chesterton teased his readers for getting the festivities all wrong. ‘ The Christmas season is domestic,’ he wrote, ‘and for that reason most people now prepare for it by struggling in tramcars, standing in queues, rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into tea shops, and wondering whether they will ever get home.’ Far better, he argued, that we stay at home and simply muck about: ‘If Christmas could become more domestic, instead of less, I believe there could be a vast increase in the real Christmas spirit; the spirit of the Child.’ This is the sort of Christmas that was celebrated at Camelot, according to the great medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Christmas in those days really did last twelve days or longer, and no one was allowed to work. ‘For there the feast was alike full fifteen days,/with all the meat and mirth men could devise.’ Candles were lit to illuminate dark nights and a huge piece of wood – called the Yule Log – was thrown onto an open fire, which would burn for days. It was also a time for hospitality and charity, with grand households expected to feed the poor. This sort of merry, lavish Christmas came under attack during the reign of Cromwell. To the Puritans, Christmas was a hopelessly pagan and old-fashioned idea. So they banned it. In 1645 Parliament abolished Christmas: for the 15 years before Charles II was restored to the throne, it was illegal to celebrate the feast and shops were encouraged to stay open.
Christmas also underwent a decline during the Industrial Revolution, when attempts were made by factory owners to transform us from a nation of hard partiers into hard workers. Christmas was reduced from twelve days to one, and employees were allowed only two days holiday per year. But when Charles Dickens’ tale A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, everything changed, and the season regained its character as a feast for the senses. The modern, miserable, industrial spirit of money-making and hard work was lampooned in the figure of Scrooge, and the medieval spirit was celebrated through the amiable Fezziwigs. How can we bring the medieval and Dickensian spirit into our homes this year? The answer is to keep it simple and to share the work. First, take as much time off as possible. Then send children out to collect ivy: free decorations! [Head to p38 to discover how to turn foliage into garlands, baubles and more.] Buy presents online ahead of time. Delegate as much as you possibly can. And make sure you have a short nap every afternoon. That is a life-saver. Sing: I heartily recommend Cerys Matthews’ songbook Hook, Line and Singer. Dance: last year my family searched ‘Scottish reeling’ on Youtube – it’s the best form of dancing because all ages can join in. The spirit of Christmas is freedom, so it’s time to do what you want and do it your way without worrying what anyone else thinks. Tom Hodgkinson is editor of The Idler (idler.co.uk)
This Christmas, delegate as much as you can and make sure you have a nap every afternoon