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Premium Economy in the Cathedral

There should be an English word for the look of ineffable smugness on the face of a person turning left onto a long-haul flight, or one with a pre-booked seat at a popular cathedral carol service. ‘Smirkling’ would do it for me.

A couple of thousand other people seemed to have had the same idea as us of binning the last minute shopping yesterday and taking in carols instead, so I found my innate competitive spirit doing battle with my gentler soul in the matter of fighting for a seat in Chichester Cathedral once they threw the doors open at 2.00pm. In the end, we were in the south transept, close to but hidden from the choir, but with a TV screen to keep us in the swim of things. The equivalent of Premium Economy with enhanced leg room, and close to the emergency exits. The bishop was right by us in all his finery, texting on his i-phone before the start of the procession.

And as for the flight, so for the service. Always the same nine lessons, mostly the same nine carols; the uneasy line of local worthies called upon to do the readings; the soaring alto voices of the choirboys rising up and meeting the tenors and basses of the ones who stayed on after their voices broke; the bishop telling us to think about God, and not presents; and the Dean reminding us that the cathedral needs £5.8 million spent on it; the candlelight reflecting back off the glasses on the faces of the back row of the choir; the ill-suppressed winter coughs during the pauses. And us childishly joining in the descant of Adeste Fideles whilst no one is looking, and trying not to laugh at the word ‘sod’ in Good King Wenceslas. I love it all.

Carols are, for me at any rate, part of the architecture of my lost childhood. I love them for their sameness, not their originality, and for the questions that they don’t ask of me, rather than the ones they do. It is like a warm seasonal blanket in which fellow Anglicans have wrapped themselves since the Irish poet Cecil Frances Alexander set down Once in Royal David’s City in 1848, ironically Europe’s year of revolution. It is the faint smell of mulled wine somewhere out there in the cloisters mixing with the ill-judged perfume of the lady in front. I don’t go into the cathedral searching for God, but neither am I avoiding him or her, either. I suppose deep down, I am hoping to reconnect for a second with the ignorance of things I didn’t know as a child, but know now. It is the axle of unconditional spirituality around which the experience of the year just lived rotates into the hopeful year around the corner. I could go on.

Whatever it all means for you, and however you celebrate this season, thank you for reading these pieces over the last year and have a very peaceful and happy Christmas.

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