What historical event fascinates you the most?
It won’t surprise many regular readers of my blog that the historical event that fascinates me has something to do with Christmas! However, the real fascination lies in its immediate effects and its long term repercussions.
The Christmas Truce took place in various places along the trenches of World War I between December 24 and 26 of 1914, the first Christmas of the war. It was a real event, but one which has had a layer of mythology placed over the top. It was likely that makeshift football games were played at certain points but they were probably nothing more than the type of playground games that had few rules and no real competitive elements. One thing is certain though. The soldiers did meet, they did sing carols, they did share food, drink and conversation and they did all this in honour of the birth of Jesus. Letters home from both sides attest to this. I have written a full post about this in the past so if you want the full story then take a read here. What I will finish with today are a few reflections on what the Christmas Truce meant and could have caused.
The first thing to say is that, apart from a few individuals with a natural bloodlust, very few troops go into battle wanting to kill. However, soldiers are taught to see the enemy as faceless entities who are simply a homogeneous mass of evil. The Christmas Truce blew this apart as the troops on both sides realised that they were fighting men exactly like themselves. Some of the Germans actually lived over in the UK before the war and knew the places familiar to the British troops. Once the human face of the enemy was revealed it caused a real conundrum. How could you fight people who you had made a personal connection with? The answer was that you couldn’t. In certain areas of the trenches the opposing sides warned each other of incoming fire or deliberately fired their guns over the tops of the trenches not in them.
The politicians and generals were extremely perturbed by the Christmas Truce and did their best to cover it up. They wanted the war to continue for their own purposes and they were quite happy to sacrifice not only ordinary working people but even many of their own contemporaries at public schools, sent to the front lines as junior officers. Their answer to the problem was to move entire battalions who had been infected by the goodwill of the Christmas Truce out of the trenches to be replaced by other troops with no personal connections to the other side. This, and their insistence on the ‘lie’ of the Truce, ended up ensuring that the war continued for nearly four more years at the loss of 8.4 million more lives.
The truth is that the humanity on show that Christmas was inconvenient for the war machines of both sides. When we remember those who died in 12 days time we must not forget that they were people like us who had family, friends, dreams and ambitions. They were brave but only because they were given no other choice by people who didn’t have to be brave.
Below is the link to my earlier post with a reflection on the event I put together at my local football club. It’s a great read.
What’s something you believe everyone should know.
The one thing that everyone should know is that there is no such thing as good taste and bad taste in terms of music, TV, Films or Books. Taste is personal. We often can’t explain how or why a particular form of entertainment appeals to us, we just know it does. If someone else likes a particular artist or a particular writer that you can’t abide, they don’t have ‘bad taste’ and if they like the same artist or writer that you do, they don’t have ‘good taste’.
It really is the height of arrogance for a person to accuse someone of having ‘no taste’ because they are saying they are a better human being than that other person.
There is a lot of popular entertainment that I don’t like, but I know that it exists because it brings pleasure to people. Who are we to say that it should not exist? If we don’t like it, we don’t have to engage with it. Turn off the TV or radio, don’t continue watching that film, don’t continue reading that book.
I love telling people about what I enjoy but if they don’t enjoy it, then they have different taste not ‘bad taste’ or ‘no taste’. One thing I know from my personal interest in Popular Culture is that those in positions of power have tried to dictate what people should watch across the centuries in order to separate them from the lower classes. It’s frustrating in the extreme to see their job being done for them by the arrogant arbiters of taste that now dominate online discourse. Live and let live. If you don’t like something move on and don’t use it to show an imagined superiority!
Generated with AI from my prompt
What does it mean to be a kid at heart?
To be a kid at heart, as I most definitely am, isn’t to look at everything with a kind of naive trust. It isn’t to bury yourself in childhood and never emerge. It isn’t to find the goodness in everything. It is the ability to retain the capacity for wonder.
When I watch a programme or a film that I remember from my childhood I am that child again. For however long I am watching I am immersing myself in the thoughts and feelings of many years ago. When I finally met Julie Dawn Cole earlier this year, I was that starry eyed boy who had a picture of her on my bedroom wall. I went back around 50 years to when I first saw her and when I had my picture taken with her I was as nervous as if my ten or eleven year old self was the one getting the opportunity to stand next to my childhood crush. I think that’s a large part of what being a kid at heart is all about.
However, there is another element that makes up that personality type. When I watched something with my children as they were growing up I had the ability to put myself in their shoes by reacting to their programmes or films in a very similar way to them. I would really enjoy programmes that I would like to have seen as a boy not as an adult. I would react to the characters and stories in the same way as I reacted to my favourite characters and stories in my childhood.
Christmas is the time that brings out my inner child like no other. For the month of December, I will play the music, the films and the series that fill me with that wonder, and I am always finding films that appeal to my inner child. For example, A Boy called Christmas really enchanted me last year and I immediately bought the Dvd for this year. My children loved The Snowman and Miracle on 34th Street as do I. I have a whole collection of Christmas Carol adaptations but the one I love most is the Richard Williams cartoon version that I first saw as a 7 year old. I will always believe that Christmas is a magical time of year, and although the way that I experience that magic has changed, my feelings haven’t. I still wake up early on Christmas Day with real excitement in my heart and I know that will never change.
Retain the Wonder!
You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?
If I had three wishes I wouldn’t seek to fast track myself and those I care about. So, a lottery win is off the table, however useful it might seem. If you know one thing from the stories about wishes it is that they come with catches. Think about the Monkey’s Paw or King Midas! So, I would be looking at making the conditions absolutely right for the best possible outcome within the scope of the situation.
My first wish would be health and happiness for those I care about. If those two are present in your life everything else is a detail. Without health you have to work much harder to benefit from your opportunities. Of course it’s possible to be ill, for example with a long term condition like M. E. and still do amazing things, as Jessica Taylor Bearman has done, but the toll it takes mentally and physically is immense. Without happiness, as many of us know, you will not get the most out of your life. Again, you can do great things but if you aren’t happy it means so much less.
My second wish would be for those in power, be they Kings, Presidents, MPs, Business Leaders or even Board level, High or Middle Managers, to stop being in it for their prestige, power and financial reward only. So few of those in charge care about the people who they represent or control. I have said before, and I will say again, that we have never had worse people in charge at all levels of our lives than we have at the moment. If we work for the very rare person with power who actually cares about us we really notice the difference. It’s not about performative behaviour but about truly wanting the best for those you are responsible for.
My third wish would be for the environment to recover enough to allow us to reset the balance of the planet. Only people with an agenda or those who blindly follow them deny climate change is a reality, but sadly they include many of the politicians with the power to change the situation. We need to have the chance to reverse the worst of the damage, a chance that has now almost certainly passed us by. Again, notice that I don’t ask for a Deus ex Machina but for the opportunity to make things better ourselves.
So, make those wishes, but make them with wisdom.
Describe a family member.
My Grandmother, Grace Quinn, was born Grace Moon on January 29 1905. She was a very talented musician in her youth who played the violin to a very good standard. She was offered the opportunity to study the violin but that required a not insignificant financial input from the family. Unfortunately, she was from a working class family whose focus, as for so many at the time and since, was finding the money to put food on the table. The headmistress of the school she attended told my Great Grandmother that she would pay for the school fees rather than see the talent that Grace had go to waste. My Great Grandmother was extremely offended by what she saw as a personal slight and refused to countenance the offer. So, at 14 Grace gave up the violin and went into service like so many girls of the time.
Once in service her intelligence shone through. In another age she would have definitely gone to university, but she turned her mind to bettering herself. She learnt French and she got a job with the family who owned the Ovaltine brand. This job saw her spending a year in France looking after the children of the family. At the time, a 21 year old woman from such humble beginnings being able to get this opportunity was quite incredible. A full 99 years later, the situation is once again the same as we deal with a world that only values money and influence not ability.
Through her job in service she met Gerald, a butler, who became her husband. They were together for more than 40 years and had two children. They lived in London, in various places before retiring to a small village called Felsted in Essex. They had a lovely cottage with a very nice garden and they opened their house to me. The atmosphere was much more relaxed than I was used to at home and I loved visiting and staying there. I first recall meeting them in 1972 when I was seven. Straight away we were partners in crime! She was mischievous, had a great sense of humour and was a fund of good sense.
Whenever I needed advice it was my Nana who I turned to, particularly when she moved to La Providence in Rochester and I visited her for lunch almost every Saturday. She was in her late seventies and early eighties and sharp as a tack. I got to know her as a person, not just my Nana, and she was one of the most amazing people I ever met.
I left for Japan in 1995 the year of her 90th birthday. By that time she had met our two sons and developed a real affection for my wife who she said was exactly the person I needed. She was right about that as she was about so much else. I said to her that I was going to be away for three years but that I would see her when I came back. She said, very firmly, that she was not going to be around when that happened. It was a statement of intent, not a form of words. As it turned out, I stayed away for three and a half years, during which time she moved into a home, having developed late onset dementia. A week before I came back she died and I am convinced that it was something she determined for herself as she wanted me to remember her as she was. Well, she succeeded. I only have amazing memories of a sharp, funny and totally wise force of nature, my Grandmother Grace, who lived up to that name all her life.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 