English Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! We hope everyone is having a happy, healthy day with their friends, families, lovers, pets, or patients.

I thought I would take this time to discuss the various traditional aspects of English Christmas. If I don't make a list my posts tend to get a little out of control, so I'm going to talk about the top 5 aspects of English Christmas.

1. Mince pie and mulled wine. Even excluding the German Glühwein that populates the Christmas markets, mulled wine is everywhere. At pubs, at concerts, at workplace Christmas parties. And it's a good thing, too: this December stands to be the coldest December in England since they started recording these things in 1910. Just another good reason they started to refer to the phenomenon as "climate change" rather than "global warming". As for the mince pies, this is a sweet pie, filled with cooked fruit and spices. I've mostly seen them as individual sized pies. As a sign of how ubiquitous they are around Christmas time, they were giving them away for free at a concert we went to on the 16th, are there always seemed to be extra pies in the office kitchen last week.

2. Christmas crackers. Not as in, crackers you put cheese on, but crackers that you pull each side and they make a loud "crack!" (or "Boom!"). There's also a paper crown inside each one, that the puller then wears, possibly for the rest of the evening. We got crackers at the concert (in addition to mince pies), and many people were wearing their crowns all night. We watched highlights of Christmas TV last night (see "Television", below), and many scenes involved families in paper crowns. Yesterday on the tube we saw lots of people carrying large bags of presents, many of them with boxes of crackers in them. We've also seen the crackers used as decorations on trees on a few occasions. You get the idea: no Christmas without crackers!

3. The meal. The American food-related holiday of the year is Thanksgiving: in England, it is Christmas. And much like our Thanksgiving, it is much-anticipated, and it usually consists of turkey (or the slightly more old-fashion goose), potato, and several kinds of "veg". Brussels sprouts are one of the traditional vegetables - whether cauliflower is traditional or not is a matter of some debate. Another classic part of the meal is something called bread sauce. I think it's safe to say that it's things like this that give British food a bad name.

4. Panto. It's hard to describe exactly what panto (short for pantomime) is. As a genre of entertainment it's part musical theater, part stand-up comedy, part pop-remix. And there is audience participation. The show is always based on a standard fairy tale (we saw Snow White, and 6 years ago Danny saw Aladdin), but they add in funny characters, such as "Muddles", the court jester who was sort of the "host" of Snow White, or a random old lady called "Widow Twankey" in Aladdin who Danny saw played by the great Ian McKellan. The audience is always meant to Boo the evil characters, to warn people when there is mischief afoot, and to engage in call and reply (as in "Don't you think I'm the fairest in the land?" "Noooo!" "Oh, yes I am!" "Oh, no you're not!" and so on). It's geared towards kids, although there are plenty of double-entendres for the adults in the audience. The songs are always re-writes of famous pop songs, of just pop songs performed straight up (our show ended with "Don't stop Believin'). All in all, it's pretty entertaining.

5. Television. Seeing as the tube is not running (!!! The entire London transport system is shut down today!) and I'm recovering from a cold, we've spent much of Christmas and Christmas eve eating yummy food, drinking tea and watching TV. This has included the Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols, featuring the King's College choir from University of Cambridge. The classically English aspects of this show are the fact that is a religious program on the main BBC channel, and the fact that the King's college choir is made up of only boys and young men. Then perhaps there's nothing more English than the Queen's Christmas message. This year she spoke of the great teamwork involved in writing the King James bible...which is similar to the teamwork involved in sports. And this teamwork can be great for building community atmosphere and self confidence. Naturally. There is also the address of the Archbishop of Canterbury - this year he suggested that perhaps the upper class aren't doing their share to get us through this economic downturn (!). Of course non-religious and non-royal television programming also exists. Just like in the US, most sitcoms have a Christmas episode, and most comedy shows (of which there are more in England) have some Christmas-themed sketches. We had the pleasure of watching the second half of "top-25 TV Christmas moments" last night. Many of them came from soap operas ("Coronation Street" and "East Enders"), some from sitcoms ("The Royle Family" seems to be favorite, as is "Gavin and Stacey"), one was from the classic "The Two Ronnies". Number three was from the much-loved "Vicar of Dibley", when the vicar is invited to about 5 or 6 homes after the service, and she is forced to eat 5 or 6 full Christmas dinners, brussels sprouts and all. Number one, naturally, was The Office Christmas episode, when (spoiler alert!) Tim finally leaves with Dawn. Though no mention of Mr. Bean's Christmas, sadly.


Lastly, I was under the impression that everyone in Britain said "Happy Christmas", though it turns out that, although many people still say this, many other have reverted to the American "Merry Christmas." Or at least, many signs and adverts use the expression "Merry Christmas." Well, that's all I've got for now. We're about to embark on making a carrot, squash and blue cheese tart, as usual inspired by Ottolenghi.

So, Happy Christmas everyone...and don't forget the 4th Ashes test starts tonight - 6:30pm EST!

Churches, Chipotle, and Canaletto

With Becca back in the US securing gainful employment, I’m on my own for the next few weeks here in London.  I’ve mostly just been feverishly working away, but I took yesterday to do some things that Becca probably wouldn’t be all that interested in.  There is, of course, a limit to the number of churches I can drag her along to without prompting a few complaints.

But before I went on my church-hunting expedition, I checked out the exhibit at the National Gallery on Canaletto and his Rivals (come to think of it, a collection of nothing but vedute of 18th-century Venice might also qualify as something of a niche interest of mine).  If you’ve ever seen a painting of Venice (like this one, say), you’ve seen Canaletto, or one of his innumerable imitators.

Assuming you like Venice (it has its detractors, I know), it’s hard not to instinctively like Canaletto’s paintings.  “Look!  It’s Venice!  Just like I remember it!”  This reaction probably has more to do with the fact that Canaletto played a large role in creating what our mental image of Venice is, but no matter.  He seems to capture something of the essence of the city – the brilliant sun illuminating the Rialto, the gentle list of gondolas on canals, and all the rest.

And that’s fine, as far as it goes.  But after half a dozen pretty pictures of canals with St. Mark’s in the background, it starts to get a bit tiresome.  So I was rather hopeful about this exhibition – perhaps it would rekindle my appreciation for Canaletto?

Well, I have to say it didn’t, though it did its very best to convince me of his genius.  If anything, I came away with an even more diminished opinion of him.

That certainly wasn’t the curators’ intent.  Though the audio tour wrap-up insisted that the main point of the exhibition was to demonstrate the variety of ways that painters depicted Venice, the real argument, implicit throughout, was more along the lines of “Look at how Canaletto vanquished all his rivals!”  This might have just been for the sake of marketing – I don’t expect that many people would turn out to an exhibition extolling the virtues of Bernardo Bellotto or Michele Marieschi.  But as the review by Charles Darwent in the Independent notes, it simply treats Canaletto’s work as the norm.  It’s undoubtedly the case that Canaletto set the standard for 18th-century Grand Tourists – there’s a reason why so many works by other painters were sold under his name.  But that doesn’t mean that we have to accept that aesthetic judgment today.

Seeing his work juxtaposed with the alternatives, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Canaletto was a sell-out.  A technically proficient sell-out, to be sure, but a sell-out all the same.  He grasped what English buyers wanted and he gave it to them.  And it wasn’t simply a realistic depiction of the Venice they had come to love.  Instead, compared with other works by some of his supposedly vanquished rivals, Canaletto’s present a rather whitewashed, excessively sunny view of the city.  Even his clouds seem to glow.  If you were using his paintings as documentary evidence for the condition of Venice in the 18th century, you’d think think that the decayed grandeur we so often associate with the city now was an entirely modern phenomenon – every building seems in pristine condition (at least during his mature period; The Stonemason’s Yard, an early work, is much more interesting than any of his canal views).  But if you look at alternative depictions, there’s dirt and decay.  In other words, Canaletto was painting postcards with idealized views of the city for tourists.

That’s not to say there aren’t interesting paintings in the exhibition.  But they’re overwhelmingly from early or late in his life – before he gained fame or after he drifted back to relative obscurity.

So who comes out of the exhibition well?  Francesco Guardi, for one.  As this view of the lagoon makes clear, Guardi was interested in atmosphere in a way that Canaletto simply wasn’t.  At the risk of falling into the trap of favoring artists who seem to anticipate later developments, Guardi just feels far more modern than Canaletto.

I fear that I’ve probably exhausted the patience of my readers with these ruminations on 18th-century view paintings, so I’ll move on to the rest of the day.

So, from 18th-century Venice to 18th-century London, in the guise of St Martin-in-the-Fields.  There are classical music concerts virtually every day there, so I was fortunate enough to step in during the rehearsal for last night’s performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by the London Musical Arts Orchestra.  The apparent distortion in the window isn’t just an effect of the photo.  It’s a new window, from 2008, by Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary.  In addition to incorporating a cross, it also gives the appearance of melting before your eyes, not a bad artistic choice, given that the stained glass was bombed out during the war.  In short, I think it works.

From St Martin-in-the-Fields, it was just a short walk to St James’s, Piccadilly, where yet another rehearsal was going on, this time by the London Orpheus Choir.  The light was starting to fade by this point, but there was enough for me to capture this photo showing the rather elegant Corinthian gallery resting on the rather stolid Doric base.  The church also has a really pretty baptismal font with Adam and Even that I somehow forgot to photograph.  Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can just link to one.

 

 

Next up on my list was Immaculate Conception – you guessed it, a Roman Catholic church.  Let me tell you – Mayfair late on a Saturday afternoon is dead.  There were a few moments where I couldn’t see anyone else on the street I was on – this, when I was just a few hundred yards away from the crush of Oxford Street.  I did wander across a rather lively looking pub, but if you’re looking for a quiet stroll on the weekend in central London, you could do worse than just wandering around Mayfair.  As for the church, there was a wedding about to start, so I couldn’t get in.  In spite of its medieval appearance, it was only built in the 1840s.  Before the 19th century, England wasn’t exactly the most friendly place for Catholics – they didn’t receive civil emancipation until 1829 and there wasn’t anything resembling the standard Catholic hierarchy until 1850.  Catholic revival and Gothic revival went very much hand in hand.

My final church visit of the day was up in Fitzrovia, so I wandered along Oxford Street for part of the way, enjoying some roasted chestnuts.  After crossing up to Margaret Street, I was once again struck by how quiet things can get when you escape the main shopping arteries.  So quiet, in fact, that I had about ten minutes all to myself in All Saints.  You’d be excused for thinking this was medieval, too.  In fact, it’s even later than Immaculate Conception (1859).  That’s right, more Victorian Gothic.  Though not, in this case, Catholic.  At least not Roman Catholic.  The Church of England is, as they say, a broad church, incorporating aspects of both Catholicism and Protestantism, with particular individuals and churches leaning in one direction or another.  All Saints falls firmly in the Anglo-Catholic camp, though this story (from the Wikipedia article on the church) nicely captures how the ‘Anglo’ part of that description remains important:

Fr Cyril Tomkinson (Vicar 1943-51), rebuking a visiting priest who asked for the use of the Roman Missal, said "the rule here is music by Mozart, choreography by Fortescue, decor by Comper, but libretto by Cranmer".

By this point, I was beginning to feel famished, so I made my way over to the sole Chipotle in London.  It was fantastic, as always.  They were especially generous with the guacamole, which can be a problem in particular branches back in the US. 

So there you have it: an afternoon and early evening in Westminster, complete with art criticism and lessons on 19th-century religious history and Anglican churchmanship.  Don’t worry, Becca will be back before you know it.