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One of my favourite rituals is the annual tree collecting venture where we become embroiled in some form of overtly competitive bid to claim the most prestigious branches on offer as we trudge around a freezing barn perched on a wind swept ridge. Genuinely, great fun. It’s all very rustic and simple until we return home and festoon our chosen twiggy beauty with a rather eclectic assortment of razzle dazzle. I’ve a rather tree obsessed friend who I imagine may resent this “sexing up” of her beloved organic firs and Norwegian spruces. And in a way, this epitomises what is wrong with this time of year.
Now I don’t want to rain, or to use this morning’s precipitation, sleet on anyone’s parade. December is a brilliantly decadent time and I enjoy partaking in the indulgent festivities as much as the next person. I’ve been known to sit and pop Maltesers by the bucket full – a very repugnant image I know – and just generally revel in having an excuse to have a really great time and a legitimate claim to watch The Sound of Music when it is aired on Boxing Day. We have been so conditioned by festive consumerism however, that I often find myself forgetting about the true spirit that should prevail on the 25th of December.
I don’t want to sound self-righteous, but the real magic of Christmas for me is in those gifts that cannot be sellotaped into oblivion or returned as a stamina building exercise during the marathon that is the January Sales. I find, it is very much about presence rather than presents. Spending time with those that we care about and perhaps chancing a sneaky game of Trivial Pursuits is what I am really counting down to. Although, after the Balderdash incident of 2004, board games in our household have since been played on a rather tentative footing.
I love that Christmas has its own culture and heritage of music, art and literature that is made more special by its limitations of usage throughout the rest of the year. When I sing In the Bleak Midwinter to a candlelit church over the holiday, I always feel re-ignited with a humbling compassion to remember the simplicity of what we are essentially celebrating. Christina Rossetti creates the perfect vignette in her poem that combines the raw offerings of maternal love and tender affection and exalts these as the most precious of gifts. And they are. If we cannot aspire to this ideal when swept along in the romanticism of sharp frosts and mulled wine at this time of year, then when can we?
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