give them what they deserve

In the 1980's, the relationship between the Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Dr Robert Runcie, and the then Conservative government of Great Britain was often strained, yet I do not recall any loud calls for the Church of England to be disestablished form the state, merely rumblings that "the clergy should not interfere in politics". This is, of course, seen as the corollary of one translation of Matthew 22:21, when Jesus is asked whether it's lawful to pay taxes to the Romans, and famously replies, "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God."

We're now facing calls for disestablishment, which would technically mean that Great Britain, despite its many Christians, would no longer be officially a Christian nation, and would move closer to being handed over to radical militants of various political and theological persuasions, and I fear that one of the strategies will be to try to pit the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church against each other.

The latest stage of this situation started with remarks of the present Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's borrowing plans to provide a "fiscal stimulus" which would presumably lead us to liquidise what savings we have so that the freed money would mitigate the financial situation; Williams stated that it was like "the addict returning to the drug...What I'm worried about is anything that pushes us straight back into the kind of spiral we were in before". Ironically, his words encapsulated those of Prime Minister James Callaghan to the Labour Party Conference of September 1976:

We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.

In this curious game of theological tennis, Mr Brown replied that "we should not walk by on the other side when people are facing problems".

The next round is masterfully described by Cranmer in his post "Church of England unites to damn "morally corrupt" Labour. In the Sunday Telegraph of December 28, Jonathan Wynne-Jones reported that the Bishop of Manchester said Labour was "beguiled by money", the Bishop of Hulme added they were "morally suspect", the Bishop of Durham opined that they had reneged on their promises, and the Bishops of Winchester and Carlisle brought up the rear with the charge that ministers had squandered their opportunity to reform society.

The backlash is reported in today's Telegraph, where the intellectual tone was set by John McFall MP with "I don't know if at the bishops' palaces there has been too much mulled wine passed around over the past few days."

There is due to be a CofE synod in February, in which a debate on the financial crisis is expected to be highly critical of the government's handling of it. Look out for much mud-slinging and sleight-of-hand in the run-up.

One area for agitation will be, I believe, the Act of Settlement 1701, which basically ensures that nobody who is a Catholic, or who is married to one, may take the British throne or be in line to it. It is, of course, a deeply discriminatory piece of legislation - but when I worshipped for several decades in the Roman Catholic Church, I don't recall a single occasion when somebody said to me, "you know, the Act of Settlement really bothers me"; in fact, in Scotland, when you heard about it, you knew that the Scottish National Party and the Labour party were fighting over the Catholic vote, especially in parts of the politico-religious quagmire thereabouts where angels fear to tread.

There was much talk of the Act of Settlement when Peter Phillips, the Queen's older grandson, married Autumn Kelly earlier in 2008. Ms Kelly, born a Catholic, converted, and so the need to amend the Act didn't arise.

Not that the Act of Settlement hasn't been amended before - to allow Edward VIII to abdicate and marry his Mrs Simpson, and it can be amended again. For example, in the early '70's, when Prince Charles developed a relationship with Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the then Chilean Ambassador to London, there was talk among MP's that if the relationship should deepen, the necessary action could be taken to ensure that she could be Charles' queen. (In the event, the ships passed in the night, but not before Ms Cruz introduced her prince to Camilla Shand, now his wife. But that's another story.)

What will be interesting is what the Bishops make of Gordon Brown's remark about "not passing by on the other side". As well as a reference to the Good Samaritan, it's an echo of Margaret Thatcher's concept, first formulated in a 1968 lecture to the Conservative Political Centre, that "even the Good Samaritan had to have the money to help, otherwise he too would have had to pass on the other side".

The thing is, Thatcher, when elected in 1979, had to take care of the mess she inherited - somebody else mugged the man going to Jericho; the wounds of today's unfortunate traveller were inflicted by his rescuer. Brown seems to suffer from a political and financial version of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy: not so much a St Francis of Assissi as a Beverley Allitt - the children's nurse who poisoned babies in order to act the hero when she stepped in, and is consequently serving time for murder.

In a not dissimilar vein to the Archbishop's, the Pope warned that the world is "headed toward ruin if selfishness prevails over solidarity during tough economic times" in his Christmas message, but I doubt Mr Brown is ready to take on the man to whom he gave a copy of his father's sermons when he had an audience - and whose predecessor Margaret Thatcher praised many times in her political memoirs.

I hope we all stick together as far as is possible during what may be testing times. I would ask for your consideration of an alternative translation of Mt:22:21 - "give Caesar what Caesar deserves, and give God what God deserves."

Christmastime in Cambridge

I have a surefire way of getting the Christmas shopping done - leave it all to the last moment and then panic. The method's served me well over many years.

So on the 23rd I went into town, and realised how long it was since I'd had a good old wander round Cambridge. There's a maze of streets between the Marketplace and King's College Chapel with lots of speciality shops, if you take a while to look between the tourist shops and the coffee bars. There was a huge BBC Radio outside broadcast van outside the Chapel, where I guess they were recording "Carols from King's" sung by the College Chapel's choirboys, a Christmas staple throughout Great Britain. On my way back, I got my first look at the famous "time eater" clock worked by a fantasy grasshopper; it was designed by horologist Dr John Taylor (who invented the thermostat that stops electric kettles from boiling dry) and donated to Corpus Christi, who mounted it outside their college library after it was unveiled by Stephen Hawking.

I visited The Eagle pub for the first time, where Watson and Crick would relax and discuss the ideas they were developing about the structure of DNA, which they would publish a paper on in 1953 with - as Watson would later admit - material from Rosalind Franklin shown to them pre-publication and without her knowledge.

What I wanted to see was the Aircraft Bar, where British and American aircraftmen would relax after having spent periods of being at fifteen minutes' notice of scrambling, and where history was burnt into the structure of the pub. It's reckoned that P.E. Turner from Cherry Hinton (now part of Cambridge but then a village in its own right) was the first airman to have burnt his initials into the roof of the Eagle with his lighter, but pretty soon they were all at it, one suitably refreshed Michelangelo drawing a picture of a naked woman with lipstick.

The landlord must have been beside himself, and the ceiling was later plastered over; but after the pub was extended in 1992, it was lovingly restored by former RAF Chief Technician James Chainey, who served from 1943-1969. The ghostly initials have returned, but, alas, the lipstick lady is lost. There are stickers with the insignia of British, American and some German squadrons all round the walls, together with a picture of the original crew of the Memphis Belle, a B-17 Flying Fortress based at Bassingbourne whose crew were the first based in Britain to complete their tour of duty of 25 missions over such places as Brest, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven, and which has been lovingly restored by the Memphis Belle Memorial Association. Below this is another picture, of the survivors of the original crew, with the cast of the 1990 picture of the same name.

After doing the Christmas shopping I repaired to another bar, where an old fellow from my homeland introduced himself haltingly and indicated that he'd had a few. (Why can you find drunken Scots in bars worldwide?) He ordered a wine, which the barmaid gave him while leaving him in no doubt that this was his last. He apologised for being over-refreshed, explained that his wife had died so he was going home to an empty house, and started to cry. She called him a cab and held his hand until it arrived.

Christmastime is like that - a time of celebration in the midst of the winter's gloom when we remember those who are dearest to us, when the absence of loved ones who are lost to us for the present is most keenly felt. I don't think it's the actual feast of Christmas, which has visited every month in the calendar at least once: rather, its current siting in midwinter is responsible. Origen and Arnobius didn't see the point of celebrating Christ's birth, the latter comparing it to the "birthdays of the gods" celebrated by the pagans.

Perhaps settling for this period as a home for the feast of Christ's Birth was influenced by early Christians who didn't quite get monotheism and wanted to compare Jesus to Apollo (Greek/Roman sun-god), similar to the way in which the Psalmist calls God the great King above all gods; certainly Tertullian had to clarify that Christians didn't worship the sun as late as the 3rd century. There still seems to be a confusion in some quarters about the nature of Christmas - Father Prospero Bonzani of Genova has unleashed a storm of protest by including a Mosque in his nativity scene. I don't doubt his sincerity in saying a mosque in a depiction of Bethlehem is true to current reality, any more than I doubt that his placing a mosque in a scene representing what happened almost six centuries before Mohammed was born is sincerely wrong, and MEP Mario Borghezio of the Lega del Nord (Italian Northern League) is right to criticize him in the strongest terms.


People who think this sort of critique of Fr Bonzani's actions are over-egging the pudding may want to consider what's at stake when Christians try to equate Islam with their own religion, especially during a major feast. Just like last year, the Cambridge News published Christmas messages from three clerics yesterday - the Right Revd. Dr Anthony Russell, Bishop of Ely, Father Rafael Estaban of Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge - and Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim chaplain to the University of Cambridge.

I'm not criticizing Mr Murad's (aka Tim Winters, who aimed polite invective at Pope Benedict XVI post-Regensburg) right to free speech, merely questioning whether his views belong in a piece giving Christmas messages. He is merely stating what he believes when he says that Muslims don't believe in the Incarnation. He adds, correctly, that neither do Jews, but Christianity owes far more to Judaism than it does to Islam. Given that even the left-wing online Huffington Post has the epistolarian Rabbi Michael Lerner outlining similarities between Chanukah and Christmas, couldn't the Nuntii Cantabrigienses ask a Rabbi to contribute, then ask Murad to write a piece for Muslims on a Muslim feast?

Having rendered unto Caesar what is his and to Gordon Brown what isn't, I'm not long back from the sublime Midnight Service of Holy Communion at St Gallicus', where Rector Pellegrina spoke about the shepherds - trusting and meek - and the Wise Men who, through their training in etiquette and need to be noticed, arguably sparked off a wave of infanticide. She quoted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who said that "in the straw of the stable, the humble and the complicated are able to kneel together". Amen to that - but I still think that the work of the Kingdom advances further through a barmaid holding a broken-hearted widower's hand than by an anachronism in a Nativity scene. Merry Christmas, everybody.

for one night only

We don't watch much TV these days because of the abuses visited by the BBC upon the viewing and listening public, but last night we watched a classic piece of television based on a format which has passed the test of time - the variety show.

I used to love variety shows, like the BBC's Seaside Special in the 1970's, which featured musical acts such as ABBA, Mireille Mathieu and Lena Zavaroni, and comic turns such as Little and Large, the Goodies and the Wurzels. Bruce Forsyth, now languishing in the controversy-ridden Strictly Come Dancing, fronted some cracking variety shows, including a run as host of Saturday Night at the London Palladium, during which the Musician's Union was on strike, leading Forsyth and Norman Wisdom to carry a show by themselves in a now-legendary performance. There was also some great stuff from across the pond, like The Andy Williams Show, The Donny and Marie Show and the daddy of them all, The Ed Sullivan Show; I've read that crime stopped in New York during the Beatles' performance on this. Every country and region had them - for instance Scotland's Welcome to the Ceilidh and Thingummyjig, an updated version of The White Heather Club.



For One Night Only was apparently commisioned for three shows, and last night we caught the Christmas special, presented jointly by Tom Jones, and classical musician, broadcaster and presenter Mylene Klass.

Guy Freeman, ITV's Controller of Music and Events, remarked of For One Night Only how good it was to be making a variety show again. And what a night it was - like the best variety shows, there was something for everyone. I put it to Maxima that she was staring rather intently at David O' Mer, a burlesque artist who was performing a unique acrobatic act in a bathtub, and she went red; but it was her turn to have a go at me for perking up a bit when the all-girl classical quartet eScala played Children; and for all the family Il Divo performed La Fuerza Major, their Spanish translation of The Power of Love, recently covered also by another favourite of mine, EJ Norman.

The comics were ones I haven't seen before, which is part of what variety shows are all about: introducing you to new talent in a fun family atmosphere which is far removed from the amphitheatre of reality shows. The first part of Jimeoin's act concentrated hilariously on his eyebrows, while Will Smith played the wall-faced English snob to a T ("there's been a terrible mix up with bookings; I'm here, and the other Will Smith's giving a talk to the Eton Chess Club").

Tom Jones is, of course, a legend, and his new album has been crafted by professional songwriters, in an echo of the Brill Building. He bookended the show with songs, the first from 24 Hours (Give a Little Love) and the last Baby it's Cold Outside with Cerys Matthews, and the multi-talented Myleene obviously enjoying herself on the piano. The comfortable dynamism between him and Klass held the whole thing together, it was everything that a variety show should be, and nobody got abusive messages left on their answerphone. BBC - watch and (re)learn! (And give Brucie a show where he can shine instead of minding monkeys, eh?)

a right to both sides of the story?

A Right to Life - and Death?
"Moral Dilemmas" series
Kenneth Boyd
Evans Brothers Limited 1999
First Paperback Editions 2003

As a fan of the great detectives from Sherlock Holmes to Morse I'm always intrigued by a mystery, and as it happens, the other day a mystery was posted through my letterbox.

The above book was sent to me by a worried parent whose son is studying RE (Religious Education) at Key Stage 4, or the first year of an RE GCSE in old money, and was given the book for a project.

The book is divided into six chapters: rights in general, abortion, fertility treatment, transplantation, rationing health care and dying well. I had a few concerns about the book in general, but the book's treatment of abortion is symptomatic of its approach.

The reader is given a worked example, and I hope I can be forgiven for quoting from this at length:

Kate is forty years old and has just discovered she is pregnant. She already has three children, two girls and a boy, aged seventeen, fifteen and and thirteen, respectively. A few years ago she and her husband, John, opened a small restaurant. It does well, but only because they both work very long hours. A month or so ago, rushing to catch the plane for their first weekend abroad for several years, Kate forgot to pack their oral contraceptives. She thought she was unable to conceive because of the time of the month, but when they got back home she was suspicious. She carried out a pregnancy test, and it was positive.

Kate and John discuss what they should do. All of their income goes on family expenses and the children's education. They can't afford to pay someone else to take on Kate's work while she has the baby, and if they are going to have another child, Kate wants to bring it up herself, as they did with the others before she went back to work.

They could give up their business and John could try to find another job. But they would earn a lot less and they would feel this would not be fair to their other children at this stage in their education. So, reluctantly, they decide to go to their doctor to ask if Kate can have an abortion. The doctor thinks that Kate and John have taken a responsible decision, and sends Kate to a hospital specialist who agrees to terminate her pregnancy. After further discussion with the doctors, Kate also has a sterilisation to prevent her having any further children.

Phew - there's so much going on in that extract it's hard to know where to start! For one thing, Kate and her husband went "reluctantly" to their doctor - why didn't the doctor pick up on this reluctance or, if you want, cognitive dissonance, and advise that they think about it?

For another, this dissonance is strengthened when we are told that "if they are going to have another child, Kate wants to bring it up herself", then we learn in the next paragraph that the poor woman has a sterilisation - so what form does the "further discussion with the doctors" take - do they have meaningful dialogue, or does this "discussion" takes place when she is having the procedure, possibly very emotional and vulnerable, with the doctors above her in every sense?

I could pick out many more things, but thirdly and lastly, I'm still concerned about Kate's sterilisation. Given that this is an early abortion, why do the doctors need to perform an invasive procedure going inside Kate's abdomen in order to ensure that the couple have no further children? Not much mystery there - the text says it's to prevent her from having further children. A shame, because it would be much simpler to perform a vasectomy, and any possible after-effects, say infection, would be far further from major organs. Perhaps John has something to tell her about his future procreative aspirations? And has she been given time to reflect that should she and her husband split up she is now infertile? I realise this isn't a post about marital fragility, but why, in our supposedly sexually emancipated society, are women expected to pay the price for their men's behaviour with and in their bodies?

All through the abortion section, there are panels giving opinions that I find one-sided. Please allow me to quote three of them. The first is from "Dr Daniel Callahan, Ethicist" in Abortion: Understanding Differences:

...abortion is a necessary evil, one that must be tolerated and supported until such time as better sex education, more effective contraception, and a more just social order make possible fewer troubled pregnancies. And even then, there will still be some justifiable reasons for abortion: it will never disappear.

The second is shot through with the cold utilitarianism of Mill senior, and comes from "Professor Roger Higgs, General Practitioner" in the 1997 BMJ (British Medical Journal) New Dictionary of Medical Ethics:

In practice, it has been shown that women usually take great thought and pains to identify and minimise the harms, balancing different and competing harms in a nuanced way in considering whether to keep or terminate a new pregnancy. Such down-to-earth examples of compromise might put ethicists, politicians, campaigners, and religious leaders to shame, and convert the general question to the particular: "How much should this possible new life matter, in this situation and at this stage?"

I might comment on the above, that Pope John Paul II, quoted in a post by Radagast, turns the question of the relationship between the general and the particular on its head to shine a light on Kant's categorical imperative, which states that we should react to each individual situation as if its solution constituted a general law: "the function of [conscience] is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgement about the right conduct to be chosen here and now". (Veritatis Splendor (The Splendour of Truth), para 32).

The third and last quote, which we are told comes from "Mother of unborn Down's syndrome son", is shorter:

If women understood that late abortions don't have to cause lasting trauma, fewer would feel obliged to give birth to a handicapped child.

This quote from A Right to Life - and Death? vindicates Matthew Connelly's prophetic reference at the end of Fatal Misconception - the Struggle to Control World Population to people "faithfully reciting a eugenic catechism without the faintest idea of where it came from or where it can lead".

The mystery proper started when I started checking out the background to the book, when I kept getting a page on the Evans Publishing Group website saying "There were no matches for your search in the database. Please try again." Even when I managed to find a mention of the book on the publisher's site, when I clicked the link to the book I got the same screen.

And yet the book is in circulation. The Times Educational Supplement lists it in an article on "citizenship" books; East Lothian Council Library Service's TalisPrism search engine lists it in a mixed bag called the Coping Collection including also Alcohol, AIDS, and All by myself: the toilet training book; and I was initially worried to see that the independent children's books magazine Books for Keeps listed it in an article bemoaning the UK's rate of teenage pregnancies (by any definition abortion doesn't prevent pregnancy), but rather relieved that they included alongside it Cool and Celibate? Sex or no sex? by David Bull.

Further afield, New Zealand's Kids' Catalogue Web lists it as one of three books in a section called "Right to life juvenile literature", the other two being You wouldn't want to be a pyramid builder! and A to Zen: a book of Japanese culture.

The book certainly casts its net wide - in the first section, Rights, Life and Costs, there are pcitures of refugees in Rwanda, a public health scheme in Zaire ("poor countries have limited resources available and also find it difficult to provide services which will reach into the more remote areas of their often very large countries") and a vaccination scheme in India.

So it wasn't a surprise to find that A right to life - and death? is listed by Better World Books, which describes itself thus: "Better World Books collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide". It still froze my blood, though, to see that the project seems to have gotten the book into Botswana, where page 38 (41 in the .pdf linked to) it is listed under "moral education" in a "prescription list" of books for junior and senior secondary published by the country's Ministry of Education.

It may seem that I'm against teaching children of an appropriate age about abortion, contraception, etc. Actually, I'm not. I'm of a mind with Wendy Wright, chair of Concerned Women of America, who says that if teachers are presented with a controversial subject, they should teach both sides of the controversy (she was debating with Richard Dawkins on why she thought evolution should be taught in schools alongside creationism).

So, by all means, in state schools teach children that a woman has a right to choose abortion - as long as the un-negotiable humanity of the unborn baby is taught alongside and with equal value; show the results of studies showing that abortion has no side effects - as long as the many studies showing links to depression, breast cancer, later miscarriage, etc etc etc are presented alongside and with equal value; share the opinion that handicapped babies bring misery for themselves and hardship for their families into the world - as long as the objective value of all human beings from Steven Hawking to the kids in the special school down the road is taught alongside and with equal value.

It sounds a tall order, but anything else isn't education, it's propaganda. In fact, Sherlock Holmes' comment on The Strange Affair of A right to life - and death? might be the same as in The Adventure of the Devil's Foot: "To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces."

But I can't end this post with a quote from a fictional character. Here's the pro-choice author Linda Bird Francke in her painfully honest work The Ambivalence of Abortion, talking about her own early abortion in the introduction ("I waited for my husband to burst through the door and yell 'stop', but of course he didn't") and finishing the section by stating what she experiences in quiet moments: "I wave at the baby. 'Of course we have room', I cry to the ghost. 'Of course we do.'"

more Christmas music

It's hard choosing your favourite Christmas songs, because there's so many of them.

One of my favourite bands, the Beatles, used to release Christmas records especially for their fans; but in their public releases had discovered that records released in the run-up to Christmas tended to make a mint, like I want to hold your hand in 1963 (British release - in the US it was released in January), I feel fine in 1964 and Day Tripper in 1965.

There were certainly Christmas songs before this, like Judy Garland's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and, of course White Christmas, which was so popular that the plates pressing the 78's wore out and Bing had to re-record it; but in general the Christmas single had to wait until the advent of the '45 to come into its own. Then, of course, since the '70's seasonal singles started to be specifically Christmas-themed, some cynically so.

I've just heard on the radio that Kate Rusby has released an album of Christmas songs from South Yorkshire. I saw her perform in the Cambridge folk festival in 2000, the year before she married Scottish folkie John McKusker, although sadly they're now divorced. Rusby is an artist who refuses to compromise in her music - like Willie Nelson, whose Pretty Paper is standard Christmas listening in our house.

But for me the Christmas song to beat them all this year is EJ Norman's sublime, soulful re-working of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love. It's been released electronically as a thank-you to her fans, and when I linked the computer to the music-centre speakers I was relieved to hear that the song had been lovingly produced with none of the compromises on the top parts or the bottom parts that John Mellencamp has so vocally criticised of late. When I heard EJ performing the song, I thought something that I very rarely think about songs these days: "perfect".

For a free copy, email EJ Norman at ejnorman@hotmail.co.uk.




Related post: EJ Norman: retro-techno moves forward

a moving tale

It used to be so easy.

I remember, as a boy, every time I looked behind me, my Mum was loading the removals van.

Our last move but one, many moons ago, was from England to my home town of Glasgow. A friend of ours is a lorry driver, so we hired a 17-ton truck to go north. We were moving to the top storey of a tenement, which meant that we had to carry a cooker, fridge, washing machine etc up four flights of stairs. My brother-in-law Arietinum and I, it almost seems, ran up with the aforementioned.

Today, I was privileged to be asked by our friends Constanter and his partner Honorata to help them move house from one part of the Draughty Old Fen to another.

We did it, thank heavens, but the passage of time made itself felt, and how. We had some heavy stuff to get upstairs, and we did it; but when I was helping Constanter lift the last piece up, I suddenly felt the muscles of my arms turn to jelly, and had absolutely no idea what contribution I was making to the upwards force. Somehow we got the bit of furniture up there, mostly due to Constanter's strength. Although he is chronologically my senior, he's looked after himself and I suspect that biologically he's far younger than me.

Since stepping on each others' toes carrying boxes of books effectively ended our careers as ballroom dancers, Constanter suggested we set ourselves up as a removals firm. I agreed heartily, and suggested a trading name of Bumpitt and Reckitt, and it went downhill from there.

Before I left, I said that I'd enjoyed the experience, and my friends' jaws hit the floor. I have to admit that I found it difficult to put into words what I meant, and was too tired to extemporise. But it's good to do things with friends, and I am left with the abiding memory of getting the mattress from hell up the stairs, which ended with all of us collapsed and laughing. I think the mattress won.

I said I was privileged to be asked by our friends to help them move, and I meant it. Friendship isn't forged in Facebook, it's made when people help each other with no expectation of return. Like, for example, when Orienta makes us noodles - can we have some more, please, and I'll move your garbage?

Christmas top ten

Recently we went to an Advent Fair during which we heard a choir from the local old Fen's primary school singing carols. It was wonderful to hear "Little Drummer Boy" and "Little Donkey", but as always I could feel the hairs on the back of my head when the infants sung "Away in a Manger". The innocent hope in that song, expressed by innocents, has a power to affect that the largest orchestra or the heaviest rock group could only wish for.

That set me thinking about Christmas songs, as opposed to carols or hymns. What would I plump for in a top ten?

Sometimes it's easier to think of what you'd exclude. I wouldn't, for instance, go for Christmas Time (Don't let the Bells End) by the Darkness. I have to admit that I think the song is great, but I can't reconcile their jumping on the Christmas bandwagon (or should that be sleigh?) with the foul language in their first album that ensured I never bought their second.

Then there's Wham's Last Christmas, which cynically ticks the Christmas boxes with the sleighbells and the snow-laden video, but the lyrics are so inane they're even worse than watery porridge:

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,
The very next day, you gave it away.
This year, to save me from tears,
I'll give it to someone better.

And then there's John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over). It was released in the same year as the atheist international anthem, Imagine, which Lennon described as "virtually the communist manifesto in a sugar coating" - this from the millionaire who wrote Working Class Hero while living in an English mansion.

So, number ten in my list would be Christmas Song by Gilbert O' Sullivan, which was a hit in both 1974 and 1978. It seems rather atheistic, but in the '70's O' Sullivan wrote with a bleak realism that never ceased to hit the nail on the head:

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year
To those of you who live in fear
And let us hope that very soon
The peace you seek will then resume

9 - Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy - I love this tale about a young boy who has no gifts to give the Infant in the manger that can compete with those of the Wise Men, so gives what he can: he plays on his drum and, so poignant given that he would be a drummer for an army, he also gives his hopes for peace - a seasonal version of Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. And it was a stroke of genius to pair David Bowie with Bing Crosby. Terry Wogan and Aled Jones have also released this for Children in Need.

8 - Talking of Aled Jones, I have to mention Walking in the Air - in the film it was sung by choirboy Peter Auty, but Jones, then also a choirboy, is associated with the song in the public memory after releasing it as a single in 1985. The song came from Howard Blake's animated film The Snowman, which was intended to be a B-movie (remember them?) accompanying Steven Spielberg's ET, but Spielberg voiced his discomfort at similarities in the two films' themes and The Snowman premiered on TV. It's still magical, I think.





7 - Whenever I hear Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee on the radio I know it's coming up to Christmas. I just love the words and the music, it's a perfect all-round pop-song for the season. Wham might have thought twice about inflicting their lugubrious dirge upon us had they listened some more to this.

6 - I know I'm concentrating on songs rather than carols or hymns, but I was knocked backwards when glamsters-turned boy-band Bros released Silent Night in 1988.

5 - After Two Tribes and the egregious Relax, when Frankie goes to Hollywood released The Power of Love in 1984 I was watching the video for the first time with a group of friends, and we didn't breathe a sigh of relief until it ended, and nothing controversial happened. I think this song has definitely passed the test of time, and the explicitly religious content of the video was refreshing.

4 - Greg Lake's I believe in Father Christmas is the first Christmas song I came to love for it's words rather than its music. It's possibly more atheistic than anything John Lennon did, with it's line about swallowing the materialistic accretions of the season "till I believed in the Israelite", but the last line still echoes through the years: "the Christmas we get we deserve". Working Troika from Prokoviev's Lieutenant Kije Suite through the song was a master-touch.

3 - Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime is an object lesson from the master on how to get a Christmas song right.

2 - The slow, thoughtful introduction to Johhny Mathis' When a Child is Born is so much a part of my Christmas now that I can't imagine not hearing it on the radio - although Fred Jay's words about the child to be born (presumably Jesus) are at odds with Jesus' words that he came to bring not peace but a sword; but I guess that anything that focusses people's minds on peace at any time is good.

1 - In this year marking the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, my number one Christmas song isn't remotely connected with Christmas. It was written at the start of the 20th Century and at one point was a favourite piece of the Scottish performer Sir Harry Lauder. It's a story of war and redemption and is sung by Rolf Harris, with all proceeds going to the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal. Have a look at Two Little Boys:



(NB - all pictures are linked to YouTube videos.)

Related post: more Christmas music