Best Christmas Ever

Crossing the Line - part 8

Celebrating Christmas with a young family is a bit of a challenge for most clergy. Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year.  Multiple carol services, Christingles and school assemblies all take their toll and that’s before the real festival begins.  Add to that a couple of crib services on Christmas Eve, a midnight Mass, a Christmas morning dash around the benefice and the pastoral work which doesn’t diminish just because its Christmas and most clergy are knackered by lunch-time on Christmas Day – which is the earliest they get to spend any time with their own family.  After lunch all they want to do it sleep.

My dad only had two places of worship to look after when I was a child.  Even so, from 5pm on Christmas Eve, it was almost non-stop until 1pm on Christmas day.  It would start with a Crib Service and move on to Midnight Mass which was always packed.  After getting to bed at about 2am, he would be up before 6am to be ready to lead services at 7:30, 8:30, 9:30 and 11am.  It was worse if someone died just before Christmas.  You can’t say ‘I’ll come and see you in a few days’ when it is probably the most tragic time of the year to lose a loved one.

Today, clergy often have a lot more churches to look after. In towns and especially in villages, vicars can easily have 4, 5, 6, or 7 churches to look after.  The pressure and the demands are huge.

So where does family fit?  Where do your own family figure in this pumped up programme of frenetic activity?

When I was a child my parents decided on our own family solution.  We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve.

After lunch, for every Christmas I can remember, my dad would go up to the parish church to set things up for the services later on.  He would take me with him to help.  I would put out Christian Aid envelopes in the pews and tidy the kneelers, while he made sure everything else was ready.

I did this happily because I knew what came next.  When everything was done, we would stand together at the altar step and he would say a Christmas prayer with me.  Then we would go home and when we walked into the living room, all the Christmas presents would have magically appeared under the tree (thanks mum) ready to be opened.  Mum and dad would pour each other a small glass of wine and our Christmas began!  During the two hours that followed, they wouldn’t answer the phone or the doorbell.  It was our little oasis of family Christmas and I got to open my presents a day early!  I also had two hours with my mum and dad, to set up and play with whatever toys I got – very important for an only child – before dad’s demanding Christmas timetable kicked back into life again.

There were some issues to face of course.  I have to say that I can never remember believing in Father Christmas.  That didn’t stop mum and dad taking me to see Father Christmas in the lead-up to Christmas, whether at the village Christmas Fair or at one of the big department stores in Manchester but I always knew that all the stuff about chimneys, flying sleighs and reindeer were just stories.  They were fun but not true.  I also knew that other children thought they were true and that it would be cruel to put doubt in their minds, so I didn’t!

One Christmas however, when I was 7 or 8, this all went very wrong!  At an end of term school assembly my dad was talking about Christmas as a time for being grateful, and he put in a line saying “Some of us know who to be grateful to for our presents at Christmas”.  He thought that would be sufficiently obtuse for the younger children, while also being capable of being understood by the older ones.  He was wrong.

A young girl went home in tears to mum saying, “The vicar said there’s no Father Christmas!”  She was heartbroken and unfortunately, her parents were among those who had objected to PCC meetings being at the Vicarage because they should be held on neutral ground.  Things moved rather quickly – amazingly quickly in an age before social media and tweets going viral.

The photograph taken for the Daily Mail.

Her parents phoned the Bolton Evening News who must have been having a slack news day.  By that evening it was in the paper – Vicar spoils Christmas!  By later that evening the phone was ringing almost non-stop, as other local press and then the national newspapers jumped on the bandwagon.  The next day the Daily Mail sent a photographer to get a photo of dad with me and some of my Christmas presents from the previous year.  The Bishop of Manchester was contacted and asked to comment on his wayward priest.  Apparently he replied that he was not aware that belief in Father Christmas was an integral part of the Christian faith.  In his defence, dad said only that he had talked about being grateful, not wanting to give the press anything which would add fuel to the fire.

In a couple of days it was all over.  Normality returned.

But the very best Christmas I can remember, didn’t occur until I was 19 years old.

It was my first year away from home.  I had joined Scargill House in the Yorkshire Dales – a community of mainly young people who welcomed up to 90 guests at a time for parish weekends, retreats, creative breaks and holiday house-parties.  Christmas was one such holiday time and 2 or 3 days before Christmas the house was full with a variety of people from older people who lived alone to young families getting away from it all.  The whole community had been rehearsing a Christmas play for weeks, telling the Christmas story in a more contemporary style to present to the guests. The whole house was decorated for the season.  As Christmas approached the temperature dropped, and by Christmas Eve there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground.  It was going to be my first white Christmas! 

On the evening of Christmas Eve, everyone went to the Midnight Mass in Kettlewell Parish Church.  A beautiful candlelit service in a picture-perfect Christmas card scene.  The sky had mostly cleared with just a few clouds providing intermittent snow flurries.  The moon was almost full and moonlight reflected off the snow covered hillsides making the whole valley shine with a silvery glow.

To get to the service, my roommate (Simon) and I got a lift into Kettlewell in the community Land Rover along with four of our older guests who didn’t drive.  They were all in their 70’s and 80’s and we crammed into this Land Rover in close fellowship to get there.

At the end of the service however, we had a problem.  With the largely clear skies, the temperature had dropped to around -5^oC and as we all got back into the Land Rover, the driver put the key into the ignition and tried to turn it.  It wouldn’t move.  Not being one to give up, he applied a bit of brute force… and the key broke off in the ignition.  We were stranded.

Everyone else had already gone by the time this happened, so the only solution seemed to be for the driver to walk the mile or so back to Scargill, wake a couple of people up who had cars, and ask them to come and pick us up.

After he set off it soon became apparent that staying and waiting for him was not a good plan either.  The Land Rover was freezing cold, even with us all huddled together in it. Simon and I would have been ok but the elderly guests began feel the cold even more than we did.  Then one of them piped up “I’m not going to sit here and freeze.  I’m going to walk!”  The others agreed and Simon and I were left with the dilemma of what to do.  We couldn’t stop them but we were worried that walking over a mile along snow covered roads was also a risky business for the four older people in their 70’s and 80’s.

As they all got out, we knew we needed to go with them.  In the starlit peace of the early hours of Christmas morning, the six of us walked back along the snowy lanes in crisp moonlight with the occasional snow flurry to make the winter scene complete.

The guests were absolutely amazing.  With Simon and I linking arms with the less mobile to steady them, a kind of Dunkirk spirit kicked in and we walked slowly through the snow singing Christmas carols.  We got almost all the way back to Scargill before the headlights of cars appeared to take us back the rest of the way.

We all went up to the main house and made Hot Chocolate and Horlicks to warm everyone up.  Far from complaining, they were elated by their Christmas adventure and their victory over the elements.

When Simon and I finally went back to our room in Community House at the bottom of the drive, it was about 2:30am.  When we trudged up the stairs to the room we shared at the top of the house, we found two Christmas stockings of presents hanging from our door handle.   It was a complete and lovely surprize and we sat on our beds unwrapping chocolates, novelties and two miniature bottles of scotch whisky.  We chinked the bottles together and drunk the lot.  Some of my friends know my love of Single Malt Whisky but will not know that it began on that night.

We finally settled down sometime after 3am for a few hours sleep, before getting up to help prepare for breakfast and wake the guests by going around the house singing Christmas carols at 8am.

No Christmas has ever come close to that.  The beauty of the moonlit night; the snow on the ground; the spirit and determination of those four elderly guests and the camaraderie they found together in adversity; the unexpected presents hanging from our door handle;  they all came together to make that the best Christmas ever!

Click here for part 9 - Finding me

Click here for an introduction to "Crossing the Line"

Not an easy village

Crossing the Line - Part 7

For all the charms of the vicarage at Blackrod, the parish was less welcoming.  In the past it had been a small mining community with a high mortality rate, and there was still a seam of hardness in many of its people.  A previous vicar had been chased around the church by a local man with a shotgun when an old overgrown corner of the churchyard had been turned into a small car park for the church.

We stayed there for over 12 years, but within a couple of months there were ominous signs of things to come.  PCC meetings (Parochial Church Council) had traditionally been held in the infants’ classroom at the church school.  The sight of adults sitting on tiny chairs for 5 year olds discussing church business must have been hilarious.  My father’s study at the vicarage was huge, and could seat 20- 30 people comfortably, so he invited the PCC to meet at the vicarage in future.

The night of the first meeting at the vicarage was surprisingly tense.  Church members arrived looked uncomfortable.  Then at the start of the meeting, someone stood up and said “I’ve been asked to act as spokesman”.  He went on to say that it wasn’t right for PCC meeting to be held at the vicarage and when dad asked him why, he replied, “PCC’s should be held on neutral ground”.  To say this was a shock to my father was probably an understatement.  Despite his newness to the village and the fact that he hadn’t done anything to upset anyone (as far as he was aware) he saw that the vicar was seen as the enemy in some long running war between church and people – and he had just been typecast as the villain!

Dad struggled on with the meeting until just before the end, when my mother came in to ask who would like a cup of tea.  For several PCC members, this was the last straw and they resigned on the spot with accusations of bribery!

That pretty well set the tone for our 12 years there – and I was not immune.  I made some good friends there in my teens but until then, things were not easy.

I discovered what it is to be the “vicar’s kid”.  At the church primary school, if I did something wrong, teachers would chide me with phrases like “I would have expected better from the vicar’s kid”.  Outside school, I had to be careful where I went because there were parts of the village where it was fair game to chase me down the road throwing stones at me because I was the vicar’s kid.  In church, parents expected me to set an example to their children in how to behave – no wonder so many children in the village hated me!  There was one boy from another school in the village, whose path I crossed every day on my way home from school.  As we passed on the street each day, he would punch me in the stomach and carry on walking.  This went on for the best part of a year until finally one day I gathered up the courage to hit him back.

Photo taken by the Daily Mail after dad was accused of telling
children there was no Father Christmas.

I also found out what it was like to be on the receiving end of people’s prejudice.  There was a travelling fairground which visited the village for a week each year.  It was an annual highlight for all the children of the village and used to set up on some empty land opposite the church.  Then one year, the land had been set aside to build a new library and health centre and when they arrived the local council refused them permission to use it. Tempers started to get heated and my dad stepped in to mediate.  He successfully negotiated for the fair to use a field by the cricket ground and all appeared to be well.  When I turned up at school the next day however, it felt like every child in the school was looking daggers at me.  Some of them had witnessed the heated exchanges between the council and the travelling fair and seen my dad there.  They made the assumption that the vicar was there because he didn’t want a fairground opposite the church, and was trying to drive them away.  All day, other children were practically spitting in my face and saying “Your dad has kicked the fair out of the village”.  Nothing could be further from the truth but the lie had found a home and nothing would change it.   I went home in tears but there was a silver lining.  When I went to the fair a couple of days later, on the field by the cricket ground, the fairground families wouldn’t let me pay for anything.  I went on all the rides for free and was even given a bag of change to play on the machines.  They knew what my dad had really done and this was their way of saying thank you.

In one sense I didn’t mind being on my own.  I was a bit of a loner and could always amuse myself.  I also had lots of toys.  My mother had gone back to work as a teacher when I started school, so there was money around - and I was an only child.  To any outsider I must have looked like a spoilt brat.  In this huge vicarage I had a play room as well as a bedroom.  In the centre of the room was the large Hornby train set made for me by my grandad.  In many ways they were right – I was precocious and over confident; I was too grown-up too young; I found myself not belonging, either at school with other kids, or at home among adults.  Physically I was a bit of a wimp and useless in a fight but I sounded cocky – not a good mix.

And there was another problem.  My mum loved being a teacher, and I was her star pupil.  She instilled in me a curiosity about the world for which I am grateful for to this day and she taught me to read well before I went to school.  This might not sound like a problem, but it set me apart from most of the other kids at school.  Arriving at school age 5, able to read books for 9 year olds, put me far ahead of most of the other village kids.  The teachers didn’t know what to do with me and I kept being put up an age group into the older classes above.  By the time I was 8, I was facing 2 years in the oldest class with 11 year olds, having already repeated a year in the class below, just waiting to be old enough to go to secondary school.

As I grew through these formative years, I also saw the cracks in my parent’s relationship.  Dad was a workaholic, often working 7 days a week, for weeks on end.  Every Saturday morning, they would have the most almighty rows – shouting and screaming at each other like clockwork, before storming off in opposite directions.  Dad desperately wanted to fulfil his calling to be a priest in this difficult community and mum wanted a husband, not a workaholic vicar.

By the age of seven, I had decided that being a vicar was the last thing in the world I would ever do and I was waiting for mum and dad to split up.  By eight, I had decided that they wouldn’t get divorced because, even though neither of them were happy, they couldn’t live without each other.  By my ninth birthday, I was becoming obsessively neurotic about things that didn’t matter and often found myself sitting on my bed in the evening with a knife, wondering if I had the courage to kill myself.

I was brought through all this by three things:

Benny and Chris - some years later

First there was Chris.  In those formative years he was the only long-term friend I had.  He was different and he wasn’t fazed by the big vicarage.  He arrived on the doorstep one Saturday morning to play and came round every Saturday from then on without fail.  He was 18 months older than me and wasn’t afraid to tell me when I was winging or being a brat.  He was also hugely trustworthy.  He heard my parents shouting and screaming at each other every Saturday and he never told a soul.  In fact he understood - his own home had its problems too.  Chris gave me someone to be with and to trust.  He was also the person who staggered with me through the streets of Blackrod after midnight the first time I got drunk (some years later) shouting “Hey everyone – this is the vicars kid and he’s drunk!” – but that’s another story.

Second, I changed schools. Faced with years of repetition in the village school, I took the exam for an independent prep school, a few miles away in Bolton and somehow I passed.

The difference was dramatic.  I went from top of the class in Blackrod to bottom of the class at Bolton Prep School and it took me years to recover.  It had a strict uniform policy where the village school had none.  There was military style ‘Sergeant’ who kept discipline and there was definitely no running in the corridors!     It was also miles away from the village.  Almost no-one from the village went there and I didn’t need to be the vicar’s kid anymore.  No-one there cared who my parents were or where I lived.  I could be myself – or rather, find out who ‘me’ was. 

Third, I discovered willpower and decided to change.  I learned to face my neurotic compulsions head on and discover that they didn’t have to rule my life.  For example, I could not sit in a room with the door open – it had to be closed.  It is hard to describe the emotional agony which something as simple as an open door can create.  Over time, I learned to face this fear by sitting on my bed night after night staring at an open door until the pain faded away.  I also put the knife away.

Then overarching all of this was my faith.  As a child I always knew God was part of my life and I know that he was a big part of helping me to face my fears.

  

I never minded going to church. Sundays were church days – I knew that and accepted it.  I enjoyed our annual stay in the convent at Wantage and one year, the nuns gave me huge collection of Bible comics from the USA which had been bound together to make a kind of multi-colour graphic novel of the Bible.  I read them regularly back in Blackrod.

The only time I put my foot down and said ‘no’ was when I went to Sunday School for the first time. Like many churches it was held during the morning service and soon I was old enough to go.  At the end of the first hymn I filed out with the other children across the road to the Church School.  The only problem was I hated it, and I mean I really hated it!  I can’t remember why but I can still remember the feeling.  I came home after my first Sunday there and said in no uncertain terms, “I am not going there again!”  My parents looked at me and they knew that I meant it.  After a few moments of awkward silence they replied “Ok, you don’t have to go” and that was the end of it.   I didn’t go to Sunday School. 

Looking back, I am so grateful to them for that moment of wisdom.  If they had forced me to go, the seeds of resentment would have grown and I am quite sure that I would have longed for the day when I could put all that church stuff behind me forever, consigned to a file in my brain called ‘unpleasant childhood memories best forgotten’.  As it was, I went to church quite happily every Sunday and God continued to be a part of my life in a natural, unforced way – a way which ultimately helped me to break free from all the other knots which were tied around my life.

As I look back now, too much of my life was ruled by fear – fear of failing – fear of not being the perfect vicar’s kid – fear of authority – fear of being found out – fear of being singled out for being different.  It was in those years before I was ten that I began to learn to face those fears and became determined not to be ruled by them.  I know that God was in that, holding me, protecting me, and slowly setting me free.

Now I was ready to be myself, whatever that was!

Click Here for an introduction to 'Crossing the Line'

Click here for part 8 - Best Christmas Ever