An English Christmas

CHRISTMAS IN THE CHILTERNS

What makes an English Christmas? A newcomer to England observes the holidays in the Chilterns (mulled wine and mischief) and pays a visit to John Milton's cottage ...



The Metropolitan tube leaves Baker Street every quarter-hour for the Chilterns. Converted flats in old brick terraces lie mashed together along the track in Marylebone, a bit like the passengers inside who sit three to a bench. The track crosses the Grand Union Canal at Rickmansworth, then heads onward through rolling chalk hills and beech woodland. In this landscape sheep huddle together for warmth and red kites hover over fields, where cold mist rises from wheat stubble.

It is a quiet ride, except for the rumble of the tracks and the very faint hum of the M25, which passes through Chorleywood in its orbit of London. London commuters consider conversation with strangers to be symptomatic of mental instability. More to the point, passengers are too horrified by tales of bank failures and lay-offs in the free daily newspapers these days to speak to each other.

The Metropolitan line ends at Amersham, 27 miles from the city. John Betjeman once lamented that the whole of this “Metroland” would be paved over, leaving no room for buttercups. The population has increased threefold since 1900, yet the Chilterns remain a world away from the crowded bustle of London, due in large part to years of tight planning restrictions and soaring house prices.

Amersham is old enough to appear in the Domesday Book. It has the crooked doorways and sagging beams (still sturdy if you don’t duck) to prove it. A stone memorial sits mostly ignored (except by the rain) in a field above the huge new Tesco grocery store on the edge of town. According to the monument’s inscription, six men and one woman were burned alive here for “principles of religious liberty”. This region is littered with bits of the old hovering just on the periphery of now.

It is easy to wonder what “now” will look like after Christmas. At my local nativity play, tea-towel-headed shepherds use their staffs as light-sabres. After the play a very patient Father Christmas asks the hundredth little child what she wants for Christmas. She blubbers on his knee and reaches for mum. There is hot chocolate for all, and well-meaning parents become speckled with glitter as they attempt to create ornaments with their squirmy toddlers.

What makes an English Christmas? In “Watching the English” [1], Kate Fox says that much of the holiday’s religious significance is commonly ignored (with the exception of the nativity play), and the term “Christmas” refers to “the entire holiday period from the 23rd/24th December right through to New Year’s Day”.

I’m a newcomer and no expert, but I suspect the following things go on the list: mulled wine and mince pies; Christmas crackers packed with cheap plastic toys and flimsy paper crowns; a loaded, lit Christmas tree; mistletoe; fidgety kids at the nativity play and tacky innuendo for the adults at the kids panto; the drunken office party where all bad behaviour is magically forgiven; a huge roast-fowl dinner with Brussels sprouts on the side (reviled, but compulsory); Christmas pudding with brandy sauce; drinks before dinner; drinks with dinner; drinks after dinner; the Queen’s speech; carollers; midnight mass; leftovers and drinks on Boxing Day (traditionally the day the alms boxes were taken around), plus an optional country walk and/or family argument.

The point is “cosiness and silliness”, says James Willoughby, an historian at Oxford, plus “nostalgic whimsy” with an emphasis on one’s childhood. Mr Willoughby tells me the author of the quintessential snowy English Christmas template, Charles Dickens, saw grey drab Christmases as an adult. But as a child, the Little Ice Age cast snow over the landscape and froze the Thames, making way for raucous frost fairs on the ice in central London.

This December birthday festivities are underway [2] for John Milton, who was born 400 winters ago and fled the London plague for the quiet of Chalfont St Giles, where he finished “Paradise Lost” [3]. Milton’s “happy rural seat of various view” remains. A more recent addition, Milton’s Indian restaurant, has moved in across the road. Edward Dawson, who curates Milton’s cottage to “stay out of mischief in semi-retirement” looks after an impressive collection of first editions, as well as a hair from the great man’s head, which sits on display next to Keats ode to it. Mr Dawson laments that Milton’s works are no longer held in such high esteem. Though Milton supported the deposition of the monarchy, two trees planted by royal hands thrive in his garden today, just beyond a weathered old door leading to the “necessarium”.

The winter solstice on December 21st marks the end of darkening days, and an inevitable sense of hope returns with the light. After Christmas green will creep back into the fields. Several miles from Amersham, lazy cows will lounge on a lush hill that leads from the River Chess at Sarratt Bottom to a little 14th-century church at the top. Here an inscription urges: “Peace be to all who visit this ancient house...pause awhile and allow the past to speak words of comfort to your soul...before you go forth from the calm of Sarratt into the busy world again.” There is much comfort in old things.