Christmas, beer and pagan cheer
Hello and welcome to the Eyecatching Words podcast, your weekly aural (with an A) magazine with news, features and music from deep in the heart of the UK, as seen by a white privileged 65 year old Brit who tries not to be typical of his demographic.
As usual I will be taking a look at my personal week, dipping an anxious toe into the ice cold water that is the news of the world, and selectively looking through the batshit that modern life produces in abundance.
The three feature articles this week are: Is beer proof of the existence of god?; What the fuck is Rishi Sunak playing at?; and what is The Spirit of Christmas in real life?
And finally the “dancing in the kitchen” playout this week is “Accidentally in Love” by Counting Crows and is dedicated to the great romance between Rishi Sunak and the Italian premier Giorgia Meloni who showed an enormous desire to get into each other’s political pants last weekend.
The week in view
My week was dominated by two very positive events, namely a trip to the Royal Academy, and some field research into the history of the Fuller’s brewery in West London.
The RA trip was to see an exhibition called The Impressionists on Paper . This was an excellent experience but I was deeply wounded by Eddie Frankel’s review in Time Out when he stated as follows:
At some point, we’ll all realise that there’s just nothing left to say about impressionism and we’ll stop trying to reframe this one tiny window of art history in a million different ways just to sell more tickets to ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ listeners from Surrey.
That really hurt, and I just want to say for the record that I do not listen to Gardener’s Question Time. And he needs to get over it and realise that the reason people love the impressionists is that they are like comfy slippers in the history of art (despite the fact that they were seen as revolutionary at the time). You can hang a Monet on the wall at home and it will end up like a member of the family, which is just not the case with so much art which is excellent but needs to live in books or at exhibitions. I mean all that sixteenth century religious art with death and crucification or the dutch masters reminding us that we are all going to die by playing “alas poor Yoric” with a skull. You can’t live with that. And much as I respect the point Tracy Emin is trying to make (sometimes) I don’t want to come down and find her knickers and fag ends on my breakfast table.
Anyway back to the exhibition itself which, by the way, Eddie Frankel begrudgingly admitted was pretty good and worth seeing. There is a lot of really lovely stuff on view. My friend Phoebe (not her real name) and I played a game, which was to select twenty or so that we really liked and photograph them for later perusal. I’ve put them on the Eyecatching words web site if you want to take a look. But the ones that stood out for me were by Van Gogh and Cezanne, because they were full of life, and the brilliant ones by Degas, because pastels on paper was his medium par excellence. In fact if I had to pick one it would be his charcoal drawing of a woman brushing her hair with just a splash of red at her feet. Unfinished, gorgeous, and natural.
Impressionists on Paper is at the Royal Academy until the end of March 2024.
My field trip to the Fuller’s brewery in Chiswick was a birthday present from my eldest lad but we dragged his brother along too. I can really recommend it. The fee sounds steep at £25 per head but you can easily drink 60% of that in the free bar afterwards given London pub prices. We certainly did. The Brewery was founded at the end of the Georgian era and has therefore been around for a couple of hundred years, although it was bought by the Asahi group in 2019. They have respectfully put in some investment but have left the heritage, management and production values alone so the ale output remains excellent. The tour guide was passionate and knowledgeable and we had a great stomp around the buildings and were able to photograph the vats and stick our heads in things and make loud noises. Highly recommended, it even led me to write one of this week’s feature articles which you can hear later about the social and metaphysical significance of beer.
The week in politics was more of the same. I’ve given Rishi Sunak his own slot later as he was behaving like a caricature of himself and descending ever deeper into some unknown place where the monsters of the id lurk. The never ending wars in Gaza and the Ukraine are now firmly embedded in international controversy with the Republicans in America and Victor Orban in Hungary doing their best to piss on the chances of progress at every turn. And Donald Trump was given the middle finger by judges in Colorado who said he wasn’t fit to stand for office, at least not in their area, and banned him from the primaries there. Bad move actually as all it will do is give oxygen to his cause. Lastly Pope Francis is allowing blessings for gay couples. But don’t get too excited. There is plenty of small print in the bible that allows traditionalists to tell gay people they are going to hell, blessed or not. Actually Pope Francis has managed to kick a couple of right wing cardinals out of office to give himself breathing space for his reforming approach, which all sounds very Mafia-Meets-Machiavelli. Good to know that god’s representative on earth can brawl with the best of them.
But as ever it’s the bits that were easy to miss that caught my eye. The first was a little reported situation on the Red Sea, that long body of water that leads up to the Suez Canal. The Houthis, an islamic group with tribal origins in the Yemen, have been busy carrying out drone attacks on shipping as a response to the Israeli presence in Gaza. Unfortunately they’ve been a bit trigger happy – or rather joystick sloppy – and have made the area a bit of a no go zone for wild shipments and other essentials. You will remember how a ship getting stuck in the canal three years ago caused chaos for months? That tells you what an important seaway it is and why the big powers are sending ships and aircraft to the area. Your petrol and your prices could take another turn for the worse thanks to these far off events which are akin to pulling out an important cable from the global economy’s intricate and fragile wiring system.
The batshit story of the week concerned Grayson Perry’s electricity bill. Now if you don’t know Grayson Perry he makes a living out being wacky and turning his life into a work of art, although he also produces tapestries and vases. Generally liked and respected he is something of an icon of British culture, and just a little bit younger than me in his early sixties.
Perry received an enormous electricity bill last week for £39,000 which is about a hundred times his normal monthly amount. Now this made headlines but the headlines are themselves interesting. Cop this lot.
- Artist Grayson Perry hit with ‘ridiculous’ £39,000 EDF Energy Bill (Sky News)
- Grayson Perry slams EDF after energy firm emptied his bank account (The Daily Mail)
- Sir Grayson Perry hits out at £39000 a month EDF energy bill error (BBC)
- Sir Grayson Perry says energy firm EDF raised electricity bill from £300 to £39,000 (Independent)
- Grayson Perry challenges electricity bill rise from £300 to £39,000 a month (The Guardian)
- What to do if you get a monster energy bill as Grayson Perry challenges EDF (Evening Standard).
Note that each media outlet uses words that reflect its style. The Mail goes for the slam, the Evening Standard goes for a monster, and the Guardian goes for a gentle use of the word challenge. The Mail of course has to spin the story further with the emotive use of “emptied his bank account”. Not sure he ever suffered as a peer of the realm with plenty (I’m sure) stashed away elsewhere. But one good thing did come out of it as this has been known to happen to ordinary folk occasionally, usually because of an incorrect meter reading. The regulator has issued a stern warning that energy bills must be accurate. Phew what a relief. We can now all sleep peacefully on our electric blankets knowing that OffTwat has spoken.
Is beer proof of the existence of God?
There is no evidence that Franklin ever said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. It’s an 18th Century urban myth and there’s no actual source attributing it to him. He did write the following in a letter to a friend:
“Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”
The friend in question was one of Franklin’s many French mates so of course he was bound to talk about wine rather than beer. But the quote is metaphysical and a bit jesuitical. You could just as well argue that cannabis is a plant that grows naturally in God’s soil and this is proof that he want us all to get stoned. It’s a great crowd pleasing theory but it has a pretty sharp curve in its logic. And in fact when he was working in London he drank mostly water and noted that his beer drinking colleagues were neither as fit nor as lucid as he was. And they were also poorer for it.
Major religions have historically discouraged the use of both beer and wine other than to incorporate it into rituals on a small scale. Islam is one of the few that goes for out and out prohibition and in my experience very few religious people I have known are abstemious. I have very hazy memories of being given a bottle of Scotch to myself at a Jewish wedding, and have observed pissed catholic priests at funerals. I have holidayed in North Wales in decades past when Sunday was a dry day and all the pubs were closed.
So as I mentioned earlier I did a brewery tour last weekend which is what prompted me to ask the question about the connection between god and beer. Beer is essentially a pagan drink and despite the thin veneer of Christianity, Britain is basically a nation of pagans.
But the reason I think beer would have god’s approval is that it brings people closer together. There is a camaraderie associated with beer that far surpasses that of people who drink wine, cocktails, and spirits. Indeed a pub crowd on a good day is more like a congregation than a crowd, and more confessions have tumbled out of drunken mouths in pubs than have ever been fabricated in a catholic confessional. The pilot episode of Star Trek in 1966 in fact featured the ship’s doctor offering the captain a drink on the grounds that he was more likely to talk to his barman than his doctor, so there is the expectation that alcohol will eventually carry us to the stars. Nearer my god to thee via Alpha Centauri.
God approves of people coming closer to each other and pubs are great places for meeting strangers. After our brewery tour on Sunday my boys and I fell into conversation with two young men named George and Hugo and the transcendal nature of the beer meant that by the time we left them an hour later we knew quite a lot about them, including religions, approximate locations, drink preferences, educational qualifications, football teams … in many ways beer is like Google in that all you have to do is put in a few beers and you can get out all the answers you want. In fact a man R Jared Staut wrote a book called The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic culture. He wrote as follows:
Beer has played a surprising role in the history of Catholic culture, spurred on by the prayer and work of brewing monks. As we confront the many challenges of our time, beer can play a role in refermenting a local and home economy, drawing people together in festivity and friendship in the warm beauty of lost traditions. Consumed in moderation, beer can contribute to healthy, holy, and happy living. This book offers a tour through Catholic history and Benedictine spirituality, illustrating how beer fits within a robustly Catholic culture. Imitating the monks in the art of brewing, Christians may come to serve others through hospitality and evangelization, contributing in this perhaps unexpected way to the larger task of restoring relationships and reshaping society.
So there you have it. Beer can fix the world. God wants you to drink beer. Probably in moderation except on significant occasions. Such as Christmas, which is after all Jesus’ birthday. Which segues nicely into the next section …
The spirit of Christmas in the real world.
The film Full Metal Jacket demonstrated graphically that any religious occasion can be interpreted according to context, including Christmas. What follows is the famous scene on Christmas Day when the drill sergeant uses the occasion to remind his recruits of what is expected of them by god and country.
But let’s be honest. Christmas is in trouble. In recent years other religions have taken the major festivals and reiterated their significance is spiritual and community events. They have been aided in this quite rightly by a movement for equality and diversity which makes them more visible. But a survey of children in Britain revealed that they did not in fact realise that Christmas was anything to do with Christ. In fact an astonishing eleven percent thought it was Father Christmas’ birthday which is a bit weird because that would mean that we should be giving him presents not the other way around.
But going back to the beer item, Britain just isn’t religious enough for Christmas. Adrian Chiles nailed it in The Guardian this week by arguing that the history indicated that what we needed was a return to the true spirit of a pagan midwinter festival.
For five days during Saturnalia, ancient Romans turned all the usual rules upside down. Slaves were served by their bosses, everyone swapped out their usual white togas for colourful party clothes, and gifts, poems and jokes were passed around. Medieval Britain echoed these Roman traditions, with a Lord of Misrule in England and an Abbot of Unreason in Scotland presiding over court festivities.
It has been said many times but Christmas is now just a festival of money. It distorts the pattern of spending in the economy. Black Friday has snuck up and stolen some of its thunder and made it even less spiritual than it once was. One insurance firm even worked out the cost of insuring Santa, his sleigh and all the presents. Because he is so old and the vehicle has been around for so long, and because the number of items it has to carry is so large, his premium tops out at a remarkable £5.3 billion for just a 24 hour period.
Midnight mass is for the tourists. We celebrate Jesus values of giving and living simple responsible lives by stuffing our faces and going crazy with our credit cards. Domestic abuse and relationship trauma peak. Everyone complains about the stress and the cost and very few people stop to think about the original point of it. Top Christmas movies are now Die Hard, Bad Santa and Chris Evil (which is about a Santa Slasher on the loose in a small American Town). Its all irredeemable.
Since Covid and its wake a lot of people have had to rein in both their celebrating and their spending. Christmas is now at a watershed. Or should that be snow shed? Give it a few more years and it will have gone the way of the FA Cup Final. What was once a cause for excitement will become a side show. There is only one way to rescue Christmas and that is to take it back to its pagan roots; after all Paganism is the 7th largest religion in the UK. However this too has its problems. The Pagan Federation (yes it’s a thing) has noted that extremist right wing groups are now trying to use paganism as a vehicle for white supremacists in Europe. 28 Pagan groups who see themselves as diverse and inclusive recently made a public statement abhorring this trend. This included – and I am being serious here, these are all actual organisations – the Hendon Heathens, The order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, The Police Pagan Association, the clan of the Dolmen Grove and Heathen Women United. I think Dolmen Grove is a cut de sac in Weymouth but I’m not sure.
Where do we go from here? Christmas has been corrupted by money. The pagans have been infiltrated by the alt right and can’t help us through midwinter. We need something new to give the darkest days of the year new meaning. If you have any ideas let me know. But in time for next Christmas please. The clock is ticking and Santa’s days are numbered …
Eyecatching 