Traditional activities?

A young friend of mine, a former student, has been complaining about the Christmas songs being played in the office where he works. I thought it was just shop assistants who had to put up with non-stop Christmas songs in the weeks leading up to Christmas. But apparently office workers have to suffer it as well. In the last college where I worked it wasn’t the songs but the tins of Cadbury’s Roses and other such chocolates that got to me. Day after relentless day they appeared and were emptied. Loads of sensible teachers with no willpower moaning about putting on weight. I took to avoiding the staffroom as much as possible.

In this strange year all the humbug is self imposed as people put their trees and Christmas lights up early. And eat their Cadbury’s Roses at home. Here’s a little something from an article about it: 

“Across the country, artificial trees are being brought down from lofts, and tinsel and lights are being untangled. “We decided to start now. Let’s bring in that magic, that joy, that hope into the house as early as possible,” says Natalie Miller-Snell, a personal and business coach, whose house now has two trees, as well as other decorations, including stockings by the fireplace and a festive display in the bathroom”.

“A FESTIVE DISPLAY IN THE BATHROOM”? What’s that all about? Who puts Christmas decorations in the bathroom? Mind you, having said that, I expect that somewhere you can buy loo roll with holly leaves and red-nosed reindeer printed on them. I’ve already seen festive face masks, child sized apparently, perhaps intended for when children see the grandparents they are still being told not to hug.

In another article, on the best film villains this time, I found this:

“The Sheriff of Nottingham

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

For pure thespy, campy naughtiness, Alan Rickman excelled himself as the heartless Sheriff of Nottingham, livid at the altruistic thievery of Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood. He rages: “Robin Hood steals money from my pocket, forcing me to hurt the public, and they love him for it? That’s it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!””

Maybe that’s what we should do: call off Christmas ... or at least postpone it. 

Actually I am quite prepared to let it go ahead in reduced form. And there is a sneaky bit of me that will miss the last minute rush around the shops with my daughter as she tries to do all the stuff that work has prevented her from accomplishing to meet her own self-imposed Christmas traditions. And, yes, it would be very nice to get all the family round the table for a Christmas dinner! We shall see!

Thinking of traditions, here’s something else:

“The National Portrait Gallery on Tuesday named Alys Tomlinson as winner of the 2020 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize. She wins £15,000.

Tomlinson, frustrated at not being able to travel for work, decided over the summer to take pictures of local teenagers whose proms were cancelled. She persuaded them to dress up in what they would have worn and photographed them in their back gardens or local parks.

She titled the series Lost Summer. “I feel that there is a vulnerability and sadness to the portraits, but also a resilience,” Tomlinson said.

“The school year ended abruptly, with no opportunity to say goodbye to friends and nothing to mark the occasion of leaving school. I wanted to photograph each teenager framed by nature, merging their inner and outer worlds.

“There is a quietness to the images and they represent a loss and longing, but also celebrate each teenager as an individual, navigating this extraordinary time.””

Now, while I can understand the feeling that this year’s school leavers had their school career ended very abruptly and without a chance to say goodbye to that part of their lives. But I can also remember a time when all we did to mark the end of school was run round with an autograph book, collecting autographs, and if we were lucky some clever and entertaining comments, from classmates and teachers we might not see again. I can also remember less than 30 years ago, indeed maybe only 25 years ago, when a young colleague at the college I then worked at suggesting we should organise a “prom” for our upper sixth leavers. It was something we had heard about from America, something from songs about “day dream believers and homecoming queens”. Nobody had done it before in our country, or at least not in our bit of England. Universities had balls and schools had discos, but the discos were a Christmas thing. 

We were on the the social committee and had organised social events for staff, the Christmas “do” and other such get togethers. We had also organised similar “do”s for students - really a glorified disco. What my young colleague wanted now was for the girls to be persuaded to wear formal evening dresses and the boys to turn up in tuxedos. Something special and different. And the kids went for it in a big way. They were 18 years old and excitable. We didn’t have a homecoming queen but we had awards. Teachers nominated students for various achievements, some serious, some less so. Students also nominated staff for awards. 

It worked like a charm and it became our college tradition. We like to think we were the first but within a few years everyone was doing it. Then high schools started doing it for their sixteen year old leavers. And now even primary schools refer to their leavers’ parties as “proms”. But then, even nursery schools have “graduation” ceremonies, with tiny people in mortar boards. 

Thus are new traditions started. And I am about to turn into an old misery-guts, like Scrooge or the Sheriff of Nottingham, and say it’s all happening too soon. What will they have to grow up into? But hey, I do keep harking back a simpler time when life was less complicated. Things have to move on.

Life goes on.  Stay safe and well, everyone!