Article

Awe and wonder

Christmas culture

Culture

Music

12 December 2024

7 min read

If you think Christmas is ‘right’ you’ve got it wrong

Contrasting cathedral Christmases conjure world-changing subversion.

Katherine Amphlett

Katherine is a counsellor based in the West Midlands.

A carol singer looks down while candles flicker.

Coventry Cathedral.

Christmas.

The very word is loaded with associations and memories and history and meaning. Just looking at it written down conjures up years of my childhood and particular feelings and impressions and smells. And for good or ill, it seems that that’s the case for most people. Ask any group of individuals for the three words that represent Christmas to them, and you’ll end up with myriad different answers – and an argument about why each person is right and everyone else is wrong!

Interestingly though, Christmas has changed in meaning for me in recent years. Ever since Covid in fact – that weird, strange, historic, awful-in-many-ways-but-unexpectedly-good-in-others period, that already feels like quite a long time ago. Christmas had one significance before it and another afterwards, and the latter is actually much more important.

It was a place that stamped it into my mind; two very different experiences of it, with the second one over-writing and enriching the first. It was Coventry Cathedral.

So. Every year for the 20 years before Covid, we went to the cathedral on Christmas Eve for an afternoon service called The Road to Bethlehem. My husband had been going nearly all his life, having been a chorister there from the age of seven. We gathered with a big group of friends and acquaintances into an enormous rag-tag choir, first for a rehearsal in the undercroft beneath the cathedral before going upstairs to join the equally enormous orchestra for a bit more practice before the service itself. Everyone was in Christmas jumpers and antlers and sparkly earrings, and the conductors of both choir and orchestra had to stand on boxes so we could see them and they could see each other. It was the only time each year that all the singers and players came together, many of them teenagers home from uni, and the whole atmosphere was buzzy and excited.

In addition to all the hundreds of musicians, gradually then the congregation began to pour in – masses and masses of children among them, nearly all dressed up in nativity costumes. There were crowds of shepherds and angels, hordes of wise men, smatterings of Marys and Josephs and a good crop of baby Jesuses, along with Batman and Spiderman and plenty of princesses who came along for the ride. And all of them during the service moved round the cathedral, from Nazareth at the start, via the nasty innkeeper who told them to clear off, no room in the inn (aka the Lady Chapel), to the hills full of sheep behind the altar, and fetched up in the stable down by the font at the end – with the choir and orchestra belting out appropriate carols at each stage. It was absolute mayhem, with babies yelling and small shepherds whacking each other with light sabres and our friend Mark – a professional tenor – singing sublimely overhead as Angel Gabriel. The cathedral was packed to groaning and at the close, when everyone was asked to light the candles they’d been holding throughout, it was also filled with light and heat and noise as everyone bellowed ‘Oh Come All ye Faithful’ at full volume, the trumpets and tubas giving it large and the kettledrums and cymbals thundering and crashing. It was exhausting, but so wonderful.

And then, 2020.

We didn’t think we’d get to the cathedral at all that year, but the decision was made to hold mini carol services – five of them – across two weekends, sung by small groups from the cathedral’s own choirs, with congregations being admitted by ticket to sit in household clumps, face masks on and no joining in please. It was dark when we got there, and raining, and the streets in Coventry were empty. The people attending the service, not many of them, were stretched in a silent line outside the doors, big gaps between them, masks on, no talking. Inside too, the lighting was low and chairs stood in lonely islands of two, empty acres of space between them (though my husband did firmly go and get a third chair so he and I and our daughter could sit together). I didn’t realise that the lady who let us in was someone I’ve sung with for years – her hair had grown and I couldn’t see her face or hear her voice properly, and when a small choir of girls filed silently in followed by the director of music looking extremely severe, I found it difficult not to cry. In fact for a considerable part of the service I did cry, which was such a pain as it misted up my glasses and I couldn’t wipe my eyes or nose because of the wretched mask.

But something interesting happened as I sat there struggling with all of this. Because, I think, of the quietness and the emptiness, I started to notice the cathedral itself – to feel its presence around me, to see its bones. There is an enormous tapestry there behind the altar, a vast portrait of Christ – strange and distorted and Picasso-like, full of symbols and odd colours – and it is very cleverly lit so that nearly all of it is in shadow except for Christ’s face, with piercing eyes that seem to look directly at you wherever you stand. In front of it are flights of highly stylised wooden doves fixed to the tops of the choir stalls, silhouetted against the tapestry as sharp crisscross shapes. There were lines and lines of tea lights on the ground along the steps, around the base of the pulpit, across the altar rail – like twinkling necklaces of light, reflected in the polished stone floor and casting strange upward shadows on the faces of the choir. And not singing and not joining in the spoken stuff meant I really began to listen – to the quietness of the building, to the sounds from the city outside, to my daughter breathing next to me, to the words of carols I know so well that I stopped hearing them years ago. It was like a sort of warmth creeping over me – I could almost feel it coming up from the floor and gradually making me feel better.

One of the canons gave the address. She looked as if she had been crying herself. ‘It’s not right, is it!’ she cried passionately. ‘That we’re separated from the people we love, that so many are afraid, or sick, that millions have lost livelihoods and now fear for the future, that our young people are missing out on friendships and education, that there’ll be empty places at so many tables.’ But, she went on to say, Christmas has never been ‘right’, not from the beginning. ‘Think of Mary’, she said. ‘So young and so vulnerable – having to give birth to her first child without her mother and aunties, not even with a proper roof over her head or a bed to rest on. Just a pile of straw and a man who wasn’t sure he even wanted to be with her at that point.’ I thought of my colleague, about to have her first baby, with her birth plan and her ‘nesting’ and her husband spending half the night wrestling with the new pram – so loved and precious, not lonely or homeless or disgraced.

‘And what about the shepherds?’ the canon continued. ‘Outcasts, forgotten ones, the lowliest of lowlies, poorest of the poor – but it was they who the angels visited. And it was only common sense that took the Wise Men to Herod’s palace. They were seeking a king after all… but they couldn’t have been more wrong, could they!’

Christmas is always all wrong, in other words. It’s meant to be. It’s meant to subvert the order of things, to teach us new lessons, to get us to think differently. So in many ways, the horrible upside-down 2020 Christmas with the world in disarray was just like the first one. And as with that one, there was light and wonder to be found, which darkness has never quenched yet.

It doesn’t matter, I don’t think, whether you believe or don’t believe in the existence of God: the fact is that the nativity is an extraordinary story that has guided millions of people for centuries, and inspired and comforted and influenced them in all kinds of ways. Even by itself, that is amazing. And the miserableness of Covid and upset and disruption and spoilt plans were – weirdly – the reason that I heard the story differently that year.

It is all right for things to be all wrong.

And because of hearing it like this, I have found that it’s given me a new kind of resilience – a higher capacity for tolerating wrongness; a cheerfulness that is not entirely centred in everything being fine and everyone behaving beautifully. Which, let’s face it, is just as well… and probably the very best gift that Christmas can give to anyone.

Support Seen & Unseen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Give now

Explainer

Books

Culture

Film & TV

Monsters

Weirdness

17 October 2024

6 min read

Bled dry: some red flags for those who hope to date a vampire

A philosopher's guide to undying love.

Ryan Stark

Ryan is the author of A Guidebook to Monsters: Philosophy, Religion, and the Paranormal.

A modern vampire stairs at the face of his girlfried.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in Twilight.

Lionsgate.

Writing from his new book, A Guidebook to Monsters, Ryan Stark delves into humanity’s undying passion for all things gothic. In the first of a two-part series, he asks what is so irresistible about vampires, what do we want from them, and what’s the deal with the armadillos?

Historians point to John Polidori’s The Vampyre as that vital moment in Western vampire lore when the grisly undead creature becomes instead a Casanova. London, 1819. Lord Ruthven, the suave vampire in question, seduces young women and orchestrates chaos in the lives of others—all for his own carnal pleasure. Importantly, he does this by way of persuasion, not rote coercion, which illustrates a key aspect of the modern vampires’ modus operandi. They prefer romance to compulsion, seduction to force. They prefer thrall, almost to the end, at which point the monster fully emerges and the victims fully grasp that their good senses have been compromised. But by then it is too late.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free,” Goethe once observed. Similarly, none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe themselves to be dating vampires.

To resist, however, is easier said than done. Even Buffy the vampire slayer succumbs to thrall, so much so that she invites Dracula to bite her. And he happily obliges, if “happily” is possible in the mind of a vampire. Later, having sobered up from the ordeal, Buffy stakes the villain, but we are nonetheless left with an uneasy feeling. Despite all her experience, despite all her kung-fu knowhow, Buffy still crumbles in the wake of thrall, at least temporarily, putting herself in grave danger and eliciting from us a pressing set of questions. How could this have happened so easily? Will this happen again? Are women attracted to men in capes?

Much like kryptonite, vampire magic also affects Superman. Two vampires have so far succeeded in hypnotizing him. Crucifer, not fortunate in name, enthralls our protagonist and sends him on several errands, until the Man of Steel has a moment of clarity, as the alcoholics call it, at which point he punches the ancient vampire through the heart. Dracula, too, disguised as an aristocrat named Rominoff, charms our superhero rather easily and then bites him on the neck, only to explode—hilariously—on the premise that Superman’s blood is tinged with sunlight. A moment of dream logic used to subvert the expectation that superblood might somehow benefit the Count.

Lord Ruthven of Polidori fame also wanders into the DC Comic Book Universe and, per usual, charms his way through problems, until he inadvertently skewers himself on a war memorial. Before this happens, however, we get the strong impression that Ruthven could beguile Superman with ease, if given the chance: that pens are mightier than swords and always have been.

On the contrary, vampires have a long history of not pointing to Heaven. Instead, they gild the lily. In their attempt to out-gothic the gothic, they turn their style inwardly upon themselves.

Psychoanalysts observe that to empathize with sociopaths is to negate the self most dangerously. They are right, I think, and right—too—that self-erasure proves difficult to recognize at times, because it feels like love. Such is the predicament of those who hope to rendezvous with vampires. Perhaps they have a death wish, some will say, or maybe a savior syndrome, as if they are to save the brooding scoundrels. As if they can. Regardless, the monsters have another plan entirely. As an early church father once explained, those who dine with the devils should bring long spoons.

Not that vampires are particularly good at banquets. They inevitably exaggerate, like the Macbeths as they welcome King Duncan to the castle: “All our service,” the lady says, “in every point twice done and then done double.”

Or recall the embroidered hospitality of Bela Lugosi’s 1931 Dracula, caught between silent film and sound: “I bid you welcome,” he says, acting out the part as if the audience must see the motive on his face. A perfect moment when the silent cinema and talking pictures conspire to produce the quintessential vampire ethos, an overstated affectation framed for the modern age. The bow of pretended humility, the elongated gesture, the monumental gravity. The outfit.

Some speculate that if vampires were able to see themselves in mirrors, they would reconsider their wardrobes. We have reason to think otherwise. Of course, the true gothic is not the vampire aesthetic, because the true gothic always points to Heaven, as in Notre Dame Cathedral, for instance, or Westminster Abbey. On the contrary, vampires have a long history of not pointing to Heaven. Instead, they gild the lily. In their attempt to out-gothic the gothic, they turn their style inwardly upon themselves, incurvatus in se, which signals not grandeur but rather self-apotheosis. In essence, vampires are their own cathedrals, and with this premise proceed accordingly, candelabras in tow.

Longinus, in On the Sublime, uses the term “frigidity” to describe the emotional effect produced by such false grandeur. He means to convey both rhetorical and metaphysical coldness, as does Dante, who places the Devil in a block of ice at the Inferno’s gaudy center. As does Stanley Kubrick, too, who freezes the possessed Jack in the maze at the end of The Shining. And somewhere near the frozen middle of Hell we find the vampires, those who betrayed the strangers in their midst and preyed upon the lonely and the desperate. But now they only devour themselves. We are punished by our sins, not for them.

On a side note, and concerning the vampire’s many choristers, the opening scene of Lugosi’s Dracula features three armadillos. They wander about the castle and mind their own business, it seems, as wolves howl and spiders weave their webs. On how they got there we do not know, but the armadillos further confirm Longinus’s additional point that the ridiculous and the sublime bear a family resemblance.

What, then, are we to make of the vampires who sparkle and the vampires with souls? Or, if not in the direction of the dreamy, then in the theater of the absurd: Count Chocula, the mascot for a popular breakfast cereal, or the puppet Count von Count from the children’s program Sesame Street, who teaches viewers how to add and subtract—hitting all the numbers with his heavy Transylvanian accent. We might deem these manifestations too unserious to be taken seriously, but in fairness to the spirit of Count Chocula, perhaps something else happens here. Namely, we find more variations upon the culture-making effort to rehabilitate the demonic, and the almost demonic, as the case might be.

If the vampire could only find pleasure in chocolate, if he could laugh with children, if he could be loved like Bella loves Edward in The Twilight Saga, then maybe there is hope enough in the world for all of us. Indeed, maybe some vampires have grown tired of being vampires. That said, we do well to heed the old Transylvanian proverb, lest we over-empathize with the villains: the sane would do no good if they made themselves monsters to help the monsters.

A recent meme depicts the real Dracula in the company of Count Chocula, Count von Count, The Twilight Saga’s Edward, and several other less-than-scary princes of darkness, at which point Dracula laments that the vampires have lost their edge.

And, true, I have yet to comment on psychic vampires and flaming extroverts, which is an oversight to be sure. As a corrective, and by way of conclusion, I observe the following: for twenty-seven dollars, one can buy a beaker of psychic vampire repellent from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Store in Beverly Hills, California. The Paper Crane Apothecary makes the product, which—with an essential blend of rosemary, lavender, and juniper—protects against the fiends who corner people at parties. At present, however, shipping will be difficult: the website tells me “This item is sold out.”

From A Guidebook to Monsters, Ryan J. Stark. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.