British Winters Read online



  British Winters

  Andrew Turner

  Copyright © Andrew Pearson 2009

  In Dedication

  For John and Margaret Turner

  My loving grandparents

  Chapter One

  The Play

  A Christmas play, a secular Christmas play… wait, that doesn’t make any sense. It’s a winter play that encompasses the Christian celebration in a totally atheistic way. The play is about the joy of the festive season even for the Godless. It delights in the gluttony of the day and the slothful ambience of the evening. It merrily depicts the proud exchange of extravagantly wrapped gifts; ‘It’s a time for giving’. More importantly, it’s a time for receiving. In this ritual of gift giving we conceal our greed and our envy of those who have received more.

  I choose my words well; five of the deadly sins, omitting only wrath and lust. And who’s to say they aren’t as much a part of Christmas as the tree and the fictional son. The play is performed by primary school children and in no way depicts any of these dark, more blinkered views of Christmas. That’s all me. The lights go down and the curtain rises. Hannah begins.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, A British Winter.”

  Hannah is my sister by adoption which, by the way, changes nothing. I put no stock in blood connections, all that ‘blood is thicker than water’ crap. I just want to state for the record that she is only nine and my folks are way too old to be breeding, even though a few sips of wine will have them telling you otherwise.

  Hannah is the lead in the play that she wrote. Sorry, that’s not quite true and I would not want you to start mistrusting my words so early in this tale. Hannah is the lead in the play that I wrote, Hannah by my side for direction. She would sit there shouting out things like, “This bit needs a reindeer in it.” Hannah was also there to guide me away from my negative side, which has a tendency to rear its ugly head - as it did in the first paragraph. Her role was more as a producer, a role of telling people what she liked and didn’t like and then telling them to get on with it. My family are not atheists by the way, they are not even agnostic. They are more lethargic. The reason for this non-religious play about the most religious time of the year came about when a mischievous local reporter asks the head of the school a perplexing question: “In a school that caters for children from a variety of different religious backgrounds, do you feel it is fair that seasonal activities appear biased in favour of the Christian belief?”

  Quick to extinguish the flames of religious nepotism, Mrs Massy jumps to a defence of the tradition and trying to accommodate the higher majority of the students - meaning the Christians outnumber everyone else. She ends her answer with:

  “...and any student who feels that any such event is against their beliefs has the right not to attend.”

  “So if you don’t like my God then get out?” the impish reporter retorts.

  “Well, that’s not quite what I mean.”

  The young reporter’s confidence increases as Mrs Massy’s control of the situation diminishes. Arrogance and patronisation become his weapons.

  “Your figures seem a little off, too, Mrs Massy. Yes, the ratio of Jews to Christians is definitely on the side of the Christians. However, put all of the non-Christians into one group, those being students at your school who do not celebrate Christmas. That, Mrs Massy, is a percentage that does outweigh the Christians.”

  What a very clever point to make, completely inaccurate, but still very clever. All other faiths, even when grouped together with the faithless, are still greatly outnumbered by the followers of Jesus or at least those who claim to follow his teaching. Mrs Massy, so blindsided by the serious tone that a normally benign subject has taken, does not question this even though her main subject is Mathematics… only joking… she has no main subject… she is after all only a primary school teacher.

  “Now this is all quite silly, this school has put on a Nativity Play every year for the past…”

  “So we’re back to tradition. This school was also long ago a ‘whites only’ school, so should we have kept that tradition?”

  This point is also nonsense. The school was once a 'whites only' school because the town or more to the point, the village at that time only had white people living in it. So yes, I guess you could say that there was a period in time where the school was ‘whites only’, in the same way my fish bowl is golds only. Absence of a minority does not always mean discrimination, sometimes they’re just absent.

  Mrs Massy’s nervous energy breaks through the thin layer of calm she has been holding on to, “I just didn’t think that anyone really gave a goddamn!”

  “Quote, ‘I didn’t think’,” the facetious journalist looks up from the notepad. “I’ll leave the blasphemy out, shall I?”

  None of this ever makes the paper because it’s all twaddle and Toby Barsky, the abovementioned journalist, knows it. More importantly, he knows that his editor only likes printing twaddle about nothing, not twaddle that might stir up questions that would then lead to nothing (there is a difference, read again if confused). Toby does, however, write a great little piece about bright young kids who want to put on a play that celebrates the season without excluding anyone. Isn’t that a Christmas miracle? Not really, Toby just thinks a run of the mill Christmas school play is a boring write-up, so he decides to add some spice to the sauce. That spice being the unfounded baiting of poor Mrs Massy. And why do I know all this? Because Tobias Benjamin Barsky is my oldest friend, a friend who is quite obviously feeling awfully uninspired working for the local paper.

  A British Winter - a title that cannot in any way offend anyone’s religious beliefs. It does on the other hand alienate the two German kids whose family have just moved into the neighbourhood. So, let a ‘sorry’ go out to Gunter and Fritz; your arrival is just bad timing. Their names aren’t really Gunter and Fritz; I just think a little light-hearted xenophobia at this time of holy wars will lighten the mood.

  The title has no hidden meanings, it is as simple as it states; Season: Winter; Location: Britain. Though, as I type the words on the very festive green cover of my sister’s play it does send my mind down a spiral of thoughts. What the hell does it all mean? I’m talking about the festivities here, not the play. What’s it all about? It doesn’t really mean anything anymore. It’s just a lot of people carrying out some odd rituals; some based on a belief of God and others invented by the corporate mind. Do we all do it without question? When asking someone, as you’re pulling on a cracker or tucking into a turkey drumstick, “Are you Christian?” you get the same response.

  “Oh, shut up party-pooper, it’s Christmas.” So does that mean that even with the loss of faith you don’t lose the ritual? Can an atheist pray to nothing and find peace in the venting of one’s worries? Can a non-believer sing the hymns in praise of the music rather than the Holy Father? Can an infidel quote scripture as a defence for his or her opinion?

  Hannah is a blossoming atheist still in the bud; she is too bright to accept half-truths and fables, but don’t tell her that because for now she is Jewish. Hannah has been a devout Jew since a very drunken and anti-Semitic Hollywood star broke her little heart. Now by devout Jew I mean she goes around telling people, “I’m a Jew you know, I don’t eat pigs, that’s bad.” She also spent two days with half a bra on the back of her head claiming it was a yarmulke. If she was older this would have been highly insulting, but luckily she’s nine so it’s adorable. The only relevance being that it was this strange and very independent decision to pick her own belief system that made her want to take charge of this Christmas Play, which is about the time of year rather than the holiness of it; well as much in charge as a nine-year-old can be.

  “You’ll help, Noel.�
� Noel is me, older brother extraordinaire. “Yep, that’ll work.”

  Hannah thinks I am great. She’s young and she’s dumb, smart for her age but still no rocket scientist. She’ll get older, she’ll wise up, but right now I’m the best. She finds my pessimism hilarious, my ability to complicate the simplest point delightful and my general discomfort with day-to-day life glorious.

  “What’s the story, Hannah Banana?” See how good I am with kids.

  “It’s about snowflakes and snowballs and snowmen and women…”

  “So, mainly snow?”

  “No, no, it’s also got to have big presents in shiny foil wrapping and big bows… and the turkey and stuffing, no peas, oh and the tree, the tree is the end bit.”

  “How long’s this play gonna be?”

  “As long as you write it, dummy.”

  And so we cook up a simple tale of the joys of Christmas without Christ.

  Once again I need to correct myself, Hannah is not the lead; she is the second lead. A mistake I made as her part does have the most dialogue. She is not, however, the central character. She plays Snowanna, a somewhat mythical being. I know, I know. We’re replacing one kind of hocus-pocus for another, but come on it’s a kids’ play. Anyway, Snowanna has set herself the task of showing the wonders of the season to the main character of the piece, who is Joel. Hannah’s best friend Jonathan plays Joel and yes, it’s not a coincidence that Jonathan is a “J” name and my name is Noel. The character of Joel is a young man who finds himself without God at a time when everyone else is rejoicing in his son. So as not to anger or upset his family and friends, Joel chooses solitude. This is when Snowanna appears; not to reaffirm Joel’s faith but to show the secular beauty of Christmas.

  “But Christmas without God is nothingness; how can I celebrate nothingness?” Joel asks Snowanna.

  “Then let us call it Xmas, in science x means an unknown variable and mass means volume, in this case, people.” Can you see where I’ve helped in the writing process?

  “And so, let us celebrate the gathering of an unknown amount of people: gathering to enjoy each other’s company; to laugh and joke of times gone by; to honour those whom we have lost; and to be excited about the future that lies ahead of us.” Hannah pretty much came up with that herself; I just helped with the rewording. Remember she’s the optimist.

  Snowanna then takes Joel all over town, showing him that making a snowman or even a snow angel is no less satisfying without the watchful eye of God. The two watch Mr Stevenson, dressed as Santa, giving out gifts at the local orphanage. Snowanna explains that this is just as much of a Xmas miracle as if the ‘real’ Santa had arrived.

  “In fact, even more so because the gifts were bought and delivered through love and kindness, through genuine human decency.” Not magic elves in a North Pole sweatshop. “You see, Joel, no matter how it came to be, Xmas is now just a part of the year where we try to put all the silly nonsense aside and love each other, flaws and all. Yeah, some do more than others and some go out of their way to do nothing at all, but stop looking out of your window and look down the hall.”

  The spotlight moves from Joel. The set is now decked out to look like a young boy’s bedroom. The light glides to Joel’s parents placing presents under the tree. After placing the last gift they put their arms around each other and say, “I think this year will be a happy one.”

  The lights go down, the curtain closes. Not a dry eye in the place. People are such saps. The room lights are raised, the cast all take a bow and Hannah steps forward.

  “Let’s spend our time caring and looking after each other and let the gods worry about the religion!” This poignant conclusion is something I’d said months earlier in idle chat with my Uncle Nick. It was never written into the play; Hannah had just decided to add it at the last minute.

  All this information, from the leaky-eyed audience to Hannah’s spontaneous closing statement, I learn from reading the local paper. I did not attend my sister’s play.

  At this point in the story I feel I should tell you that I am at a crossroads in my existence. Although a better analogy would be that there’s a great big fucking hole in the road of my life which I am continually fighting the urge to jump into. I am not suicidal, as a man with no God; that option seems a tad drastic. Yet, I have become unravelled like a homemade knitted toy; every pull on the woollen thread losing a little of who I am. I have started questioning everything and everyone. Why do people love me as much as they claim to? Is a family’s love simply biological? And if that’s the case, what a sorry state of affairs that is: love without choice. Is love such a thoughtless human instinct? Is the love of one’s friends out of mutual respect or out of mutual gain? Is love something we search for, something we work hard to obtain or just a word we use to label a relationship we find convenient? I question things like this all day and all night; things with no answers and maybe there isn’t any real need for answers. It is what it is. Should I not be content with that? I’m not using any of this as a defence or an excuse for not attending the play, but it certainly affects my demeanour and actions.

  I question all things, but not Hannah. Hannah is the truth of all things, smart enough to question the accepted ways and young enough not to have been crushed by the lack of answers. She beams with joy to ask, “Why is it this way?” She shines with an uncanny sense of knowing she is right when people try to fob her off with a bullshit answer. When Hannah was around six she asked my stepfather where babies came from; she asked this while the family were sitting around the kitchen table having breakfast.

  “Well, Hannah, when two people fall in love and really truly love one another then they are blessed with a baby.” A standard fatherly response; Clive was pretty quick with it, too.

  “So, do Uncle Nick and Auntie Sam not really love each other?”

  Nick and Sam had been together for nearly eight years at this point and both desperately wanted children. However, it was known that one of them, no one knew which one, but one of them was unable to have children. A fact that killed Dad’s explanation as did her next comment.

  “And Jonathan’s mum and dad are getting a divorce, so shouldn’t we tell them that they must still love each other, or they wouldn’t have had Jonathan, and it has to be true love, right, Dad?”

  “Yep, err… I’ll go give them a call, you stay and finish your….what’ve you got there, Hannah?”

  “Pancakes and bacon, it’s what the Yanks eat, right, Noel?” Hannah happily replied; she wasn’t a kosher Jew at this point.

  Anyway, what’s my point? My point is that she lives with the same need to question as I do but unlike me, it invigorates her. She is in awe at a world that needs questions to be asked and rejoices in the knowledge that there will always be enough unanswered ones to give the world a sense of wonder.

  I never question Hannah, every word she speaks is truth, it’s not always correct, but it is always her truth. Yet I did not find time in my busy life of doing nothing to see a play she was in, one that I co-wrote. That is who I am. I’m not the good guy; this is not a good guy and bad guy kind of story. Why didn’t I go? Is there an acceptable excuse? I didn’t go because of fear, fear that I’d feel nothing while sitting there; feel nothing while my sister put all her heart into the words I helped write; fear that I would be that one dry eye in the audience.