Advent: 2 December 2022
Good morning,
Behind today’s window in our Advent Calendar A to Z is the letter C. C could of course be for candles, cards or crackers – or Christmas itself. But instead, in our calendar, C is for… carols. Carols are folk-music, often dance-tunes used for singing narratives in the Christian year especially Christmas. What writings on carols have found their way into my collection?
Let me begin with Lucy Mangan, the peerless Guardian columnist, on 24 December 2011. She describes how she always cries in carol services:
If I haven’t broken before, Once in Royal David’s City always does it for me, because I remember a line from my favourite childhood book, End of Term by Antonia Forest. Nicola Marlow is singing the opening verse solo at her school’s service and the lovely old music instructor, Dr Herrick, tells her to “try to sing it with regret. Once in Royal David’s City. Not now, you see. Now we have only been pretending. But once, long ago, if we’d only had the luck to be there, just once this thing really happened.”
Mangan goes on to describe her husband’s reaction to her weeping:
“It’s not exactly making a joyful noise unto the Lord, is it?” muses Toryboy thoughtfully as I wipe my nose on his coat. No, but it is love and memories, the past and present, the pagan and religious instinct, joy and sadness all knotted up together, and maybe for most of us, that is what Christmas is. Hearing the deep music in a glorious song of old.
I suspect that is true for many at the University Carol Service or Nine Lessons and Carols or Alumni Carol Services. Slightly less reverent – though by Reverend Richard Coles (a former preacher in the chapel) – is this story from his book Bringing in the Sheaves:
A fortnight before Christmas and in between carol services I am on the phone to a funeral director, going through the order of service for a friend’s mother, who I will be consigning to eternity at a crematorium in South London. As we’re going through the hymns and music, she asks me what I want the organist to play when the coffin comes in. ‘I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,’ I tell her. On the day, I open my order of service and see printed therein; As the cortège enters, the organist will play ‘I Know That My Reindeer Cometh.’
In fact there can be something comical about carols. Alan Bennett suggests in Untold Stories that:
Carols are also full of titles for bad novels:
This Happy Morning
The Sons of Earth
The King of Angels
Could I suggest some more?
The Gloomy Clouds of Night
The Silent Stars
Hopes and Fears
The Wondrous Gift
Outcast and Stranger
The Lowly Maiden
The University Carol Service takes place tomorrow, Saturday 3 December at 7.30 pm in Holy Trinity Church, South Street, St Andrews. Doors open at 6.45 pm. It will be so wonderful to sing carols again in this service after a three-year hiatus caused by two further C’s – the coronavirus Covid-19. All are welcome – students, staff, alumni and others. Here is a wintry image of Holy Trinity Church I took in February 2021:
And here is a taster of St Salvator’s Chapel Choir singing a carol in Holy Trinity – Gabriel’s Message – recorded last year when the service itself was cancelled. https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&rlz=1C1GCEB_enGB991GB991&hl=en-US&tbm=vid&q=st+salvator%27s+chapel+choir+youtube&ved=2ahUKEwjk1uHrt9n7AhW7i_0HHRFlDccQ8ccDegQIDBAF&biw=1256&bih=561&dpr=1.5#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:05a0b9ca,vid:1JvRoxETWHg
One last C: Cake. This recipe is for Fruit Cake for Christmas from the Christ Church Rathgar Millennium Cookbook, produced by a church in Dublin in which I worshipped:
One cup water
One tsp baking soda
One tsp salt
One cup sugar
One cup brown sugar
Four large eggs
Two cups dried fruit
Lemon juice
Sample the whiskey to check for quality. Take a large bowl. Check whiskey again. To be sure of quality pour one level cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add tsp sugar and beat again.
Make sure whiskey is still okay. Cry another tup. Turn off mixer. Break two leggs and add to bowl and chuck in cup of dried fruit. Mix on turner. If fried druit gets stuck in beaters pry loose with drewscriver. Sample whiskey for tonsistincity. Next, sift two cups of salt or something. Who cares? Check whiskey. Sift lemon juice. Add one tablespoon of sugar or something. Whatever you can find.
Grease the oven. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees. Don’t forget to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out of the window.
Check the whiskey again and go to bed.
If you follow the recipe, let me know how it turns out.
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain