November, the month that began with remembering at the Feast of All Souls and then Remembrance Sunday, ends with the turning of the church’s year. The cycle closes down with the celebration of Christ as King, and then bursts into new life with Advent Sunday and the promises of His arrival again. The “little apocalypse” of Luke, foretelling doom and destruction, is far removed from our Wormingdale celebrations and the “Darkness into Light” service that evening in our candlelit church. As the soft light flickers on the ancient stones, shadows dart here and there like spectres of the past, Georgian worshippers seeking their old box pews, medieval peasantry standing on the hay-strewn floor watching the mysteries behind the rood screen and praying before the statue of the Virgin.
I sit in the vicar’s stall and as the choir sings “Lo, He comes with clouds descending” I recall sitting one Advent night in a redundant church in the north-east of England. I had worshipped there as a child and sung in the choir, and lifting my head I saw that the censing angels above the chancel arch had vanished. Enormous curtains hid the richly-decorated reredos, and the organ that Mr. Vinnicombe had played for 44 years was locked and silent.
He taught my brother music, dropping the keyboard lid onto the boy’s fingers when the sound became unbearable. He was a rotund perfectionist, and as he played he would roll along the organ stool, at one with Bach, and we in the choir would become at one with the anthems he gave us to sing. We rolled marbles along the choir stalls during the sermon.
The 17th century panel painted with Moses and Aaron glimmered at the west end. Beneath those rich oils there are traces of an earlier scene – a stable and shepherds, an old man and a young girl, an angel, a sheep and an ox and a palm tree. Flecks of gilt shine through from the halo around the cradle. The Puritans hated such religious scenes. No Christmas for them. Instead the Law-giver and the Elder took pride of place.
The first Saturday in December is the Wenchoster Antiques Fair that takes over several streets in the heart of the city. Brightly-lit stalls shine in the gloom, and the mulled wine stand usually does a roaring trade. The Cathedral Shop always has a table selling Charity Christmas cards - Old Masters on the front and “Crusaid” or “Alzheimer’s” on the back. In past years they have sold almost all of their stock. The doors of the “Nine Bells” stand open, and from inside will come the sounds of merry-making. The Wenchoster Morris will dance in the Market Square, and afterwards process to the Cathedral where they will perform a Mumming Play in front of the West doors. The Bishop will be there to welcome them and give them God’s blessing.
Back in my vicarage I rise early to start preparing the five Carol Services I will be taking. A wisp of dawn shows above Desmond’s barn on the hill. As I boil the kettle the radio rattles along with things that fail to penetrate, and I recall such a morning in December 2003 when my slow awakening was interrupted by hurried knocking at the door, and I found my neighbour wide-eyed and out of breath. “Old Jenkins has died," he gasped, and we sat at the kitchen table, mugs of hot tea in our chilled hands, talking about him. He had been a natural story-teller, and no-one, then or now, could match his reading of the shepherd’s tale at the Carol service.
Old Jenkins, (and I never knew his first name), understood the importance of narrative, and how fact is that fiction is able to contain and reveal aspects of reality and truth which are beyond the reach of most literary expression.
Christ’s friends were now and then made uneasy when he descended into story-telling. A Master should leave that kind of thing to entertainers. But, except for a marvellous sermon and much historic teaching of a revolutionary nature, Christ’s Rule was laid down in a series of excellent tales and practical acts. In Wenchoster’s main bookstore the tables quake under the obese lives of yesterday’s politicians, and the shelves stretch into infinity with a thousand novels, but it is not here that I shall find the truth. Rather, and despite the derision heaped upon carols by the Bishop of Croydon, it will be there, in the Christmas services, and in the singing of the old familiar fables which keep at their heart the truth of the Incarnation.
This week will see me start my Christmas shopping. I have numerous gifts to get, and on the eve of the great Feast I am expecting to receive a goose from Keith once again.
1. THE SUET MASS
The origins of this obscure liturgical and culinary practice are lost in the mists of time, but during the later Middle Ages it was still common in Advent for women of the parish to bring balls of suet wrapped in rough cloth for blessing by the priest. Often this would take place during the main celebration of the Sunday Eucharist, but there are accounts of pieces of blessed suet being placed in monstrances which were then used to bless other pieces of suet gathered in church.
The 1701 Rendering Canons outlawed this usage.
2. FATHER’S FOLLY
This refers to a tall, slender tower on Mutter’s Tump, two miles west of Badgers Poke, built by the Reverend Joseph Privy in 1849 as a “repository for continental lithographs and sundry representations.” (The Privy Papers. Oxon University Press 1870.) A fire on Advent Sunday, 1861, destroyed the entire collection, but the event is commemorated each year by the Joseph Privy Folio Society with a thanksgiving Evensong, when the Folly Collects are read.
3. TREBLES IN A BARREL
Now forbidden in the Diocese, the “Barrel Trebling” of Herring Harbour would draw many music critics and devotees of progressive choir school training. Young trebles were lightly oiled and squeezed into a barrel, whereupon the choirmaster would insist that they sing O Sapentia to a medieval setting.
4. PEW-LEAPING
“And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary the babe leaped in her womb.” (Saint Luke 1:41a)
The people of the parish of North Posset Saint Pulcheria (The Unruly) took this piece of scripture to heart after a blessing on Gaudete Sunday, 1688. Seizing a statue of the Virgin Mary from the Lady Chapel they installed it in the centre of the nave and proceeded to jump from pew to pew in celebration of the forthcoming birth of the Christ-child. This tradition continues to this day albeit in a more restrained manner: During the intoning of the Magnificat at Solemn Evensong the faithful jump up and down on the spot until a signal from the priest bids them stop.
5. MOUNTING THE CHOIR (West Posset St. Monica)
This rather quaint custom with a pronounced musical genre dates to the monastic tradition when monks would gather together the boys of the local village for a musical audition - in the hope that a choir could be formed for the Christmas services. All trebles and sopranos would be lined up outside the village pub and at a starting signal from the priest (usually "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit - Go!") they boys would have to sprint up the nearby slopes of Monica's Mount. There waiting for them would be the choirmaster who would insist that they individually sing the Te Deum Laudamus in Latin before they could draw breath.
The name Monica's Mount has an obscure etymology. Local historians frown on the theory that it was here that St. Monica of local devotion met her wrestling match in Guy de Roscoff, a traveling knight and purveyor of garlic in 1253. There is, however, no other exlanation for the name.
6. THE EUNUCH'S DANCE (Hermitage Grope)
A faded copy of "Tayles of Olde Wynchoster" (1533) in the Cathedral Chained Library contains the triplet:
You knock there and I knock here,
And 'tween us all the folk will fear
The coming of our Saviour dear.
The lines date from the early fourteenth century and refer to the custom when, after Vespers, and an hour or two in the tavern on the evening of Advent Sunday, the young men of the village would run down the street singing and dancing, knocking on the doors and shouting, "'E's a-coming!" to the faithful and non-churched alike.
7. BLIND WOMAN'S COTTAGING (Buttokclench)
Despite claims to the contrary this game is of recent origin, having its beginnings in the Victorian era. Although more commonly associated with spring, it appears to have been translated to the season of Advent at some time during the First World War - when the men-folk of the village were away at the Front and the women needed light diversions during the long autumn evenings.
Having drawn lots one woman would be blindfolded and handed a tankard of gin. While the others called her and taunted her she would have to find her way home from the meeting point. At every incorrect door she tried to open she would pay the penalty of taking a large swing of spirit. The record for finding the correct door is still held by Edith Crumble of 3 the Mounds - four minutes sixteen seconds with only one fault. More infamous perhaps is one Ms. Hilly Tiptoe who downed her gin before setting off and fifteen seconds later entered the cottage of the village schoolmistress where she remained until her death in 1963.
1. Mince Liturgy, Overcamp St. Lucy.
2. Feast of St. Kenneth the Good-Looking.
3. Cathedral Incense Testing Day
4. Advent Nut-Fest, Badgers Poke.
5. Feria. (Indoors if wet.)
6. Second Sunday of Advent. 3.00 p.m. Diocesan Toy Service.
7. Distribution of Presents to the Poor.
8. Diocesan Vestment Repair Day.
9. Advent Lecture: “Will these bulbs light?” The Dean. (Chapter House.)
10. The Blessing of the Crackers, Broad Gusset.
11. Mothers’ Union Pudding Throwing, Baldor Castle.
12. North Wench ”Bauble Festival.”
13. Third Sunday of Advent. Shaston Snoring Christmas Sermon Marathon.
14. Feria.
15. Abbots Tipple Mulled Wine Fair.
16. Wenchoster Late Night Shopping.
17. Bishop’s Visitation, Herring Harbour (6.00 p.m. Solemn Evensong.)
18. Wenchoster Soup Kitchen Opens.
19. Christmas Tree Festival at Stook.
20. The Fourth Sunday of Advent. (Gaudete) Cathedral Candlelit Carols.
21. All Day Sherry Tasting, the Nine Bells, Privy Street.
22. Wormingdale Village Carolling.
23. “Blessing of the Presents” at Bonk.
24. Christmas Eve.
25. Christmas Day.
26. Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr. Diocesan Hunt meets 2.00 p.m.
27. The First Sunday after Christmas.
28. Holy Innocents.
29. Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist (transferred.)
30. Feria.
31. Wenchoster Wassailing.
This was sent in by our Antipodean attache, and Superior of The Order of the Holy Hanky of Saint Veronica, Father Julius O'Flaherty. Click HERE to proceed.
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