How I spent my Christmas Vacation

Best Christmas Ever

Christmas morning my parents were cruel enough to wake me by 10 AM. We did a lot of wandering the streets of London, up and down the Thames,

past Big Ben and Parliament and

Buckingham Palace and the Prime Minister's house. Lynn got excited everywhere she recognized from Love Actually, made my dad and brother sit on a bench by the Thames and have Mark say he was in love. My dad had never seen the movie and didn't quite understand, at which point we all decided he had to watch it that night before dinner.

We'd discussed going to a Christmas service at the Westmister Abbey because we are such good Christians, and since most of London was closed we were in line for 3 o'clock evensong by 2:10. When the doors opened promptly at 2:30 we were ushered in to unbelievably good seats. As we walked into the huge, gorgeous, incredible building we saw the graves of the many famous people buried inside the church: Sir Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Longfellow, poetic lords Byron and Tennyson, composers including Handel and Purcell, and Queen Elizabeths, just to name a few I remember. The huge organ (hehe...huge organ) filled the hall with music. According to the program, the following (in order) entertained us before the service began:

Bach's In dulci jubilo BWV 729
Dietrich Buxtehude's Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ BuxWV 188
Olivier Messiaen's Puer natus est nobis from Livre du Saint
Sacrement
Buxtehude's Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern Bux WV 223
Charles-Marie Widor's Andante sostenuto from Symphonie Gothique Op 70

The service itself started promptly at 3 PM (gotta love those Anglicans/gentiles and their timeliness) with the entrance of the all-male choir. Soprano and alto parts were sung by young pre-pubescent boys (very cute) and all the music was incredible. Everything was clearly church music, but it spanned a good 500+ years, making it Church Music History in a Nutshell. Also strange to my Jew upbringing was having actual music written into the program so we could sing along. In the Jew world, it's 5000 years of beautiful tradition that lets you know the melody, fuck you if you don't already know it, and half the people can't carry a tune anyway. Gentiles write it out for you, allow for new melodies to be brought in regularly, and sing everything in major keys. Dissonance showed up in the more recently composed pieces, but always major and musical and happy.

The following composers were represented over the course of the Christmas Festal Evensong:

Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)
Bernard Rose (1916-1996)
Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988)
Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672)
Nathum Tate (1652-1715)

My favorite piece was actually after the service ended: Improvisation on Adeste fideles by Francis Pott (b 1957). I'm not sure if it was an actual written down composition or just the organist's personal improvisation, but it was quite interesting and marvelous.

By this point it was dark out and the fam headed back to our hotel. We all crawled into my parents' huge bed and watched Love Actually on Lynn's laptop, which is a great movie to begin with but was even more fun because it takes place in London at Christmastime so we could say "we saw that today!" to half the movie. As per usual, I was drawn to the unrequited love plots. Somehow it seems more romantic when they don't work out. "Is there anything worse than the total agony of being in love?" That's closeish to one of the lines, spoken by the kid. Is happiness just not glamorous enough for me? Shit I'm annoying sometimes.

Christmas dinner was at the Savoy's restaurant (centerpiece pictured to the right). As part of the standard English Christams tradition, each of our plates were adorned with a large Chistmas cracker. Grab each side and yank for a loud pop and inside you will find a prize (I got a flashlight thing), a sheet with games, and a gold paper crown to be worn during the meal. A very drunk Santa and a mediocre magician and a cute Dutch waiter and too much good food and rose-colored champagne made the evening special.

So ended the best, most Christmassy Christmas in this little Jewgirl's life

posted by Jill @ Sunday, December 25, 2005