Time to celebrate our legacy
Country sports are ingrained in our festive traditions, says Editor Alexandra Henton, from stags on Christmas cards to the Boxing Day meet. We would be poorer without them
EVERYONE’S Christmas Day, just like a shoot day, poses the thorny question, should you stop for lunch or shoot through? The latter is our preference when it comes to the 25th. I’ve always been staggered by those whose organisation – and animal numbers – will allow cooking, let alone sitting down, before four o’clock. Hunters and their kit need to be prepped for Boxing Day before the proper pickling sets in; it’s far too hit and miss after port. But whatever the running order at your hearth, the well-worn grooves of tradition are slipped into with comforting familiarity.
Sporting imagery and traditions are part of the currency of a ‘happy holidays’. Christmas cards sport stags, farming and hunting scenes. Wrapping paper and ribbons are emblazoned with strutting pheasants and countryside motifs. They hang from Christmas trees (pheasants jostle with Henry VIII and his numerous wives on our annual evergreen) and gamebird feathers make the smartest of wreaths. Flashes of scarlet, the iridescent cock pheasant’s plumage, a partridge nestled in a pear tree; this fauna provides the rich palette for Christmas, not just for the sporting world but for everyone else’s festivities, too.
Feathered game also makes its way onto the nation’s celebratory table. Much as I adore a barbecued young partridge during the heady days of an Indian summer, it is the venison and pheasant of the festive season that sizzles with true celebration; symbols of plenty and tradition during short and cold days and long nights. And we should be delighted that the rich spoils of the sporting world become once more a common language at this time of year. Let us embrace traditions of festive giving (as Rory Knight Bruce covers in his feature this month) and of bringing the outside in (see Johnny Scott), they are our own. There is preparation and plucking and joyful plundering of the natural larder. And merriment in this abundance, something much needed this season, so share it. Take a brace of prepared birds to friends and neighbours this year, and you can offer some of the feathers separately for decoration.
Hounds and horses now become visible at the centre of communities again, images on the wall of the local pub come to life on Boxing Day or at New Year. The Field correspondent observed in 1905: “In some countries everyone who can obtain a horse or pony turns out, and quiet little country hunts, where at ordinary times the followers do not number more than two score, find the number of riders increased to 200. On such occasions, capping is usually suspended and everyone is made welcome... It may be fairly said that everyone who has a taste for either hunting or shooting generally succeeds in gratifying it in some degree at Christmas time.” Nearly 120 years on, may his dispatch remain accurate.
Our tradition in this corner of the shire starts with the Hunt Carol Service, where the chance to bellow favourite carols alongside traditional and hunting readings, followed by cracking mulled cider, sets the tone for the forthcoming few days before the inevitable trill of Feliz Navidad inspires the urge for a spot of festive fancy-dress karaoke. Each aspect of our festive tradition sits against the backdrop of our sporting world, and without it celebrations ring somewhat hollow.
The Field’s Christmas message is a simple and heartfelt one. We are as much a part of the festive season as the tree and its glistening decorations so be joyful. Take comfort in this seasonal flurry of goodwill and use it to bolster the positive sporting narrative. The structure and backbone provided by the sporting world – social and economic – is an opportunity like no other and irreplaceable. It is not only grouse moors that provide this unique combination of economic benefit and social glue but every aspect of sporting life. It binds together communities, it provides employment and it cares for and maintains our landscape. It is charitable, welcoming and brimming with volunteers. The season of goodwill is inherently sporting and long may it remain so because Christmas without The Field is surely no Christmas at all.
We are as much a part of the festive season as the tree and its glistening decorations