3:19pm Friday 11th January 2008
By Catherine Cain
My tinsel is decidedly frayed, the lower levels of my denuded tree are now limply brushing the floorboards and my baubles are dusty.
Christmas has come and gone again in Maison Cain and the aftermath is a sorry sight indeed.
Just one week ago everything was glittering and pristine. The living room was a twinkling pseudo-Victorian wonderland that even Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen at his most flamboyant would have envied. The kitchen, most particularly the bulging fridge, had been visited by the festive spirits of Delia and Nigella, and the dining room was arrayed in splendour (well, there were crackers on the table) ready for the feast.
Now in the early hours of January 2008, with just a couple of days to go until the season of peace and goodwill is packed away into the far reaches of the attic for another year, the battered remnants of Christmas (just) past have begun to look tawdry, moth-eaten and a little bit sad. Our house has gone from grotto to grotty in a mere seven days.
"I don't understand why we can't just take everything down now," griped my husband on New Year's Day as an ominous pattering noise from the general direction of the tree indicated the shedding of yet another vacuum cleaner bag full of pine needles.
"I mean, it's all over, isn't it?" he added hopefully.
Considering that his own mother has been known to start dismantling all traces of festivity shortly after the Queen's Speech, this was hardly a surprising comment.
But I come from a family where the 12 days of Christmas are traditionally eeked out to the very last possible moment of January 6, so, naturally, his whinging fell on deaf ears.
My tree might be as bald and brown as (Sir) Ben Kingsley, my holly garlands as limp and kinky as Julian Clary and my tinsel wreaths as tarnished as Jade Goody's reputation, but they are destined to wilt on defiantly in full public view until the Epiphany, which, as all good Christians know, marks the arrival of the Three Wise Men bearing gifts to the Nativity crib scene.
It came as a bit of shock, therefore, to hear from no less a source than the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, that not only were the Wise Men highly unlikely to have stopped off at a stable at Bethlehem in the bleak midwinter 2,000 or so years ago, but that other staples of my favourite Christmas cards - assorted kneeling oxen and asses and bright stars in the east - were probably out of the theological picture, too.
There I was last week, quietly listening to Radio Five while wrapping my last Christmas presents, feeling warmly full of advocaat and peace and goodwill to all mankind, when Rowan Williams popped up on the Simon Mayo show in the company of avowed atheist Ricky Gervais, and more or less told me that all my favourite elements of the Christmas story were bunkum.
Now, of course, in the rational, questing part of my mind I already knew that.
As I understand it, much of the traditional Nativity narrative is symbolic and was probably, when it originally evolved, partly political.
Mentions of kings, stars, angels and shepherds were a masterly blending of ancient traditions and prophecies designed to bind and attract people to the new faith.
But while I might privately and rationally think this, I really don't want the Archbishop of Canterbury to think it too - and even if he does, I certainly don't want him to tell me about it.
There's little enough beauty and mystery in the world around us today as it is.
The thought of one of the C of E's top bods forensically dismantling one of his own team's most lovely and mystical moments (albeit in the company of his very own oxen and ass in the forms of Ricky Gervais and Simon Mayo) is, to say the least, dispiriting.
Actually, I'm quite fond of Rowan Williams, who looks a little like a cross between an Old Testament prophet and a druid.
I'm sure his words were intended as a clarification, a belt and braces back-to-basics approach, but for me, they stripped away the gorgeous, otherworldly metaphor of a scene that has inspired painters, poets and simple believers for hundreds of years.
The truth of the matter is that the real Jesus was probably born in June and that magi, shepherds, angels, oxen and asses were nowhere in sight at the time.
The centuries have lovingly embroidered the story of his birth with more layers of meaning and faith than a bumper Christmas box of Terry's All Gold - and given it a beauty, richness and depth that still resonates in these cynical early days of a new century and new millennium.
The Nativity story as told by St Matthew might not be strictly true, but in my heart I want it to be.
And those kings are essential.
At Westfield School our annual carol concert always included TS Eliot's poem The Journey of the Magi.
You probably remember it too from your own childhood.
It's the one that begins: "A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of year for a journey" and goes on to mention "silken girls and sherbet", "camel men cursing", and "night fires going out".
I always found it splendidly evocative; you could almost smell the animals' sour breath and touch the golden fabric of the kings' cloaks. It's a beautiful, oddly sad poem describing a mysterious, magical event.
Even today you only have to mention the word frankincense to me to set off great waves of jealousy and remorse that I was never cast in this plum costume role in my infant's school Nativity play.
The arrival of the wise men at Bethlehem, in fact or fiction, was always, for me, the high point of the Nativity story, not just because they brought presents.
And that's the reason why, in Maison Cain, despite the doubts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, our decorations, no matter how tired or tatty, will be hanging on by their very last thread until Sunday.
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