I was delighted to be invited last week to join Cordelia Hall and her friend Kate Glennerster on an annual pilgrimage. At this time of year, they head off together to take in some of the amazing Christmas light shows decorating the outside walls and gardens of homes in parts of the city. Not the delicate strings of white lights festooned on front garden topiary you understand – but the joyful explosion of pulsating colourful twinkling that is generously provided by our fellow Oxonians to brighten up these dark December nights for everyone who passes by. I have always loved them.
What I hadn’t fully understood was this was to be an immersive Christmas experience. For Cordelia doesn’t do this season by halves. First, I am treated to a tour of her Christmas crib collection. She has 74 of them. On every shelf, mantlepiece and sideboard of her home in Summertown, in sitting room, kitchen, even bathrooms there are nativity scenes from all over the globe. From Jericho to Jerusalem, Uganda to Uruguay, Bulgaria to Burma, collected by her, made by her children and given as gifts by friends over forty years. Taken out from their wrappings in Advent, they will stay up until Epiphany, when they must make way for her show of hyacinths in coloured vases about which I have written previously.
The tradition of creating nativity sets they say goes back to 1223 when St. Francis of Assisi chose to tell the Christmas story by setting a manger surrounded by real people and animals, in a wood near the monastery of Greccio. The practice caught on. Cordelia’s sets are an eclectic mix of styles, sizes and materials. Some of the vessels in which they sit, tiny matchboxes, walnut shells and miniature gourds are so small they struggle to contain the essential figures of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. One from Costa Rica manages to tuck itself into a quail’s egg. In others the whole village seems to have come out to celebrate. In pride of place is a magnificent scene set against a star-studded sky painted on to the back of a Weetabix box. Alongside the three wise men and their camel, the shepherds and their sheep, there is a midwife carrying towels, a man with a basket of fruit and vegetables and a lady selling strings of garlic. A bear and an angel stand side by side.
Modelled out of clay, wood, paper, tin, even shell, there are painted icons from Eastern Europe, South American appliqued wall hangings and a simple stable made of straw, Mary dressed in a brightly coloured African kanga. There is a whole section of knitted and crocheted figures, positioned low enough for small children to reach. Each is unique to the place from which it came.
A quick perusal of her tree, every branch dripping with decorative delights, and Cordelia dons a cheerful red coat, which like the Christmas cribs, comes out in December and is packed away at 12th night, and we head off out into the night to see the lights.
And they are magical. The best ones are multi coloured extravaganzas, flashing illuminations of snowmen, penguins, reindeers and the like. There’s Santa on a seesaw, a Christmas Express train, and a lawn laid out with a path of radiant red, yellow and green candy sticks like a scene from The Wizard of Oz. Some have inflatables, Father Christmas tethered to the front door by rope to protect him from high winds. Kate and Cordelia say the numbers providing these sparkling spectacles are not what they were, but for me there are plenty enough to put a smile on my face. On the weekend of the winter solstice, they bring a message of hope. They lift the spirits. A temporary burst of illuminations to herald in a return to lengthening days.
Back at Cordelia’s and as she lights the candles on the Christmas tree, it’s time to indulge in a small Yuletide snifter.
Happy Christmas everyone.
Nativity scene with figures made in Provence. Cordelia bought the first figures in Corsica in 1986 and has been adding to them ever since.
The midwife and the garlic seller
Mary and Joseph in a matchbox.
Figures from Syria – unusually for a nativity scene Joseph is carrying the baby Jesus.
Nativity scene in a box from Burma.
South American wall hanging
Corn dolly nativity in a walnut shell (left) and coloured foil nativity from Poland (right).
Carved into a shell in Jerusalem, Cordelia picked this up at the Gloucester Green market for a fiver. It is hung on a lampshade so the light shines through.
The knitted nativity.
Christmas lights in Marston.
‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ flag and Jesus neon.
This lit up house in Cutteslowe is raising money for John Watson community special school in Wheatley, caring for children with a variety of disabilities.
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