Melville Cooke The First Noel Ding dong, ding dong hear the bell ringing out the First Noel
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I HEARD the First Noel of the 2003 shopping season on October 31. October 31. They could not wait the one itsy-bitsy day until November 1 to start the shopping ball a rolling. It seems they start the Christmas shopping season earlier each year.
The way things are going, Santa is going to need a handcart instead of a sleigh, because there is no snow in the summer. Heck, he may as well use a deportee Corolla station wagon in Jamaica, cause we have none of the other white, powdery stuff anyway.
The ads came out before the Christmas carols this year. Y'know, the glossy brochures saying buy me, buy me and starve for 36 months that sort of stuff. Seriously, if you really want to see what Santa brought for Christmas, go to the hire purchase payment section of that big yellow money machine around pay-day in January 2003. I observed the matter in 2001 and I was astounded to know that so many people had fallen into the trap. I have no reason to not believe that it will only get worse or, for the respective companies, better this time around.
Then there are the Christmas carols. Can't turn the dial on the radio without hearing one. I am not into Christianity, Christmas, dreaming of a white Christmas in chamber pot on a river rock hot Jamaica and sleigh bells jingling, but I do enjoy good singing. Good, simple singing. These modern dudes are just trying too hard with the Christmas songs. I hear them trembling their voices, taking some spectacular notes, holding same for as long as an octogenarian on a triple dose of Viagra can manage the business - and it does not move me. Not one bit. The University Singers move me.
The congregations in the churches I used to attend in my youth (yes, I went to church too) moved me with their carols. But not these much-vaunted singers. Y'see, they lack heart. And art is nothing without heart. They sound as if they are performing, but not as if they are singing about something they believe in.
Which brings me to one of my (many?) contradictions. I pooh-pooh over Christianity and the notion of their Christ being born on a particular day that they can identify (as if they have ordered His birth certificate by Express Service at the RGD), but I like the Christmas season. I wish we could have a commercial-free one, but hey. Having grown up in a strongly Christian home (yes, me same one), Christmas holds so many good memories for me. The sorrel and the cake and the presents and the tree are a part of it, I guess, but above all it is family and just an all-round good feeling.
Growing up in St. Thomas, the sugar cane flagging was the sign that Christmas was really upon us, not an easy downpayment plan announcement. I liked the carols as well, especially the joy with which they were sung. I relished in singing the last verse of that hymn at Christmas morning service - "Yea Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning." After all, you got to sing it only once a year. And I have a few memories of watchnight services at Ebenezer Methodist in Wilmington, St. Thomas, where it seemed I always fell asleep just before midnight and spent the magic moment curled up on a pew.
Christmas still has that ho-ho-ho, all is well feeling about it. The general climate seems to have changed; the wind is blowing a bit more briskly, the afternoon sun is a bit rosier. And now, being the boy who has become a bigger boy who has become a father boy, I am torn between my disdain for the notion and commercialisation of Christmas and my wish for my children to have even a smidgen of the kind of memories I have about my childhood Yuletide.
I do not have the right to deny them such extreme pleasure. I really wish, though, to take them to some real country church so that they can hear a man with a cracked, rumbling bass belching out "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," or a lady who has lost the key completely warbling on about "We Three Kings." I would teach them about respect for those who have the courage to believe, without trying to buy a DVD or new laptop, and the beauty of simplicity. But by the time they are finished with the Christmas carols on the radio, if that damned Rudolph and his rum-drinking nose ever come near me, I will break my almost meatless regimen and fry me some reindeer thigh.
On the first day of Christmas Santa sent to me, A hire purchase delivery
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
