Advent 20 – 20 December 2021

Tracy Niven
Monday 20 December 2021

Good morning,

With just a few days before Christmas, we turn now to celebrations of the festival. Scotland was profoundly affected by the Reformation, which took hold of the nation in 1560 and dominated culture until the 20th Century. Reformed theology and practice held that almost all religious art was a form of idolatry, that the Christian year should not be acknowledged, that festivals such as Christmas were too Catholic. The only Christian feast-day was Sunday. The only art which allowed for ornamentation was the rhetoric around God’s Word, in sermon and prayer.

There is a fine example of Church discipline on this matter from St Andrews where the Kirk Session (the elders who oversaw the local church) recorded in their minutes the following cases:

The said day, James Clunie, cultellar [maker of cutlery], and Waltir Younger [wer] accusit for violating of the Sabbat day be superstitius keeping of Yuill-day haly-day, and abstaining fra their wark and labour that day. . . James Thomsoun, masoun, being dilatit [reported to the authorities] and accusit for superstitius keiping of Yuill-day last wes halie day, and that he said that quha wald or wald nocht, he wald nocht wark on Yuill day, and was nocht in use of the samen ; and being again asldt quhethir he wald stand be that or nocht, promittit [promised] that in tyme cuming, during his remaining in this citie, he sould nevir keip the said Yuill day haly-day, bot sould wark on that day … to onie man that wald offer him wark . . and gif na man chairgis him with wark, he sail wark sum rigging-stanis [ridge-stones on a roof] of his ain.

Yuill-day (Christmas Day) was not to be a holiday. My own father worked on Christmas Day in the early part of his career in offices in Glasgow.

Times have changed. Few people work on Christmas Day, though in St Andrews people will be working in the care homes, hotels, restaurants, police station, churches and the University’s halls of residence among other places. There are Christmas trees in many houses, and decorations throughout the town, including in St Salvator’s Quad:

And people from St Andrews celebrate Christmas. One St Andrean who has offered her own yuletide celebrations is K. T. Tunstall. Brought up in St Andrews where her late father David Tunstall was a Physics lecturer, she went to school at Lawhead Primary and Madras College, before further schooling in Dundee and Connecticut. Since her debut album Eye to the Telescope in 2004 she has had a successful career as singer songwriter and musician. I remember seeing her play in the Younger Hall in the Eye o’ the Dug festival in 2012 also featuring King Creosote.

In 2007 she released the EP, Have Yourself a Very KT Christmas with her versions of Sleigh Ride, Lonely this Christmas, and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), which you can hear at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtm1Uf9YCUg

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice – and so a reminder of the candlelit labyrinth in the gardens by Economics. All are welcome tomorrow (Tuesday 21 December) to walk a path of light on the longest night, from 4.30 – 9 pm.

Yours,
Donald.

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