Years go by, and I drop “Anglican” from my hashtags: I start celebrating Christmas today, and yes, I will be doing it twice. As a weird creature of habit, I really wish I could have a special power to combine two dates, Gregorian and Julian, Western (Anglican/Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) together, but I can’t: an olde silly joke about the ecumenical matter turns bittersweet in these winter days.
Both dates of Christmas are genuine and authentic for me, a wanderer who belongs to a few worlds and seemingly nowhere: the older I get the better I understand this. But my first Christmas Eve is impossible now without the Festival for Nine Lessons and Carols, without Tavener’s Lamb and “Gabriel’s message” with its “everyone through out the world will ever say most highly favoured lady; gloria,” without our walks around grey and rainy Cambridge, and Victorian churches in Trumpington and Grantchester, poorly lit up yet welcoming, and warm, and cosy, and cheerful British awkwardness, and pudding and mince pies, and love.
Merry Christmas to you all.
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