Richard Peters -in the Sai Kung Country Park

Happy New Year

 

Here's wishing you a very peaceful and prosperous new year of 2012.

If the last 12 months has taught us anything, it is that we should never take our eye off the ball as far as national and international events are concerned: who could have predicted the seismic changes brought about by the so-called Arab Spring, the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Gaddafi the tyrant, the hope of the new country of South Sudan or the problems caused by the population of the earth reaching 7 billion?

Final curtain calls were given to Pete Postlethwaite, Susannah York, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Gough and Peter Falk.

No more notes will ensue from Gerry Rafferty, Gary Moore or Amy Winehouse.

We'll never see one more splash of paint from Lucian Freud or Cy Twombly.

The astonishing moves by Joe Frazier, Gary Speed or Sócrates are now things of the past.

The world has lost the much-loved political intellectual Václav Havel and the much-hated mad and bad Kim Jong-il.

Not even an apple a day could keep Steve Jobs here.

Out here in ole Hong Kong, many Chinesey folk hold back and really only celebrate Chinese New Year which officially begins on 23rd January. Our last Year of the Dragon, in 2000, saw many interesting changes -Vladimir Putin and George Bush were elected presidents, Israel left Lebanon after 12 years occupation, the submarine Kursk sunk in the Barents Sea, the International Space Station received its first residents. We had a billion less people.

We'll be sailing into stormy economic waters, particularly with regard to the question of the Euro. If people stop popping to the shops to buy 'stuff' then millions of Chinese will be without work and that will affect the ability of Chinese government to effectively control its people. Eek!

Who is to say where our future lies. It's supposed to be the year that our b'ak'tun cycle ends (according to the Mayan long-count calendar), which could mean the earth ends or that we bump into the planet Nibiru. Hmmm... that might not be so nice. All I can say is that you should make sure you live each day to its fullness.

Oh and I might just pop by from time-to-time with a little comment or two. Cheers!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas has always dominated the end of the year: it's all twinkly and sparkly, all jolly and presenty. As a kid, nothing could beat it -not even a birthday!

I know that we always tut-tut about Christmas in the shops arriving earlier and earlier, and some of us may hark back to a time when decorations were put up quite late in the season (for the Memsahib it was Christmas Eve!), but according to the liturgical calendar those Christian festivities have to begin at a much earlier date than most of us might be comfortable with. In our medieval hitherworld, when festivities were the true punctuation marks of the year, festivals meant something. For the poor, it was a chance to take part in a whole-community event where they could avail themselves of some decent grub and grog. For the wealthy, it was a time to shine and gain merit through benevolence.

Let's begin with All Saint's Day (November 1st -the wedding anniversary day of the Memsahib and meself) which is included in the winter festival category. It is a day to recall the bond between those in purgatory, in heaven and on earth. Over time it became, at least in the west, a solemn commemoration. In Mexico and the Philippines, however, it is a bit more of a party known as the Day of the Dead Día de Muertos and Todos Los Santos/Undas/Araw ng mga Patay respectively.

Advent, the four weeks that lead up to Christmas, for me will always be the time for opening the chocolatey advent calendar doors and trying yet again to build that tinsley Blue Peter coat hanger advent crown. More recently, child-orientated Christingle Services have been established in churches sometime in advent. These modern ceremonies are another pretty way to introduce to kids some nicey-nicey Christmassy Christianness -one lit candle lighting all the other candles in a darkened church is an obvious symbolic reference even the smallest child can understand. 

Saint Nicholas Day, or Sinterklaas, remembers the great bishop of Myra who cured pickled boys in Asia Minor and paid the dowry for poor girls to avoid their being driven into prostitution. From him, of course, we obtain our Santa. One the most popular saints of Christendom, his feast day is still celebrated with vigour, particularly by the Dutch who look forward to his coming up river on a special boat from somewhere exotic (like Spain) with cheeky attendants, the Black Peters (Zwarte Pieten) who enjoy handing out presents and placing them in the children's clogs. We have even celebrated this fun-packed event here in the little Anglo-Dutch enclave of Ko Tong Ha Yeung!

Of course, other religions also have winter festivities at this time. It begins on the day before All Saints Day (Hallowe'en) with Samhain, the first official day of winter for the Celts and neo-pagans. It is the ritual end of harvest time and an occasion to remember the dead. Diwali and Hanukkah, the Hindu and Jewish festivals of light, appear a little later. Bodhi Day, on which Buddhists celebrate the Buddha's great enlightenment, is also in early December. Chinese New Year then usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice. Of course, the 31^st of December, New Year's Eve, is non-religious but is steeped in rich tradition, particularly in the form of Hogmanay. New Year's Day, once the start of the medieval Feast of Fools, was also a day where Lords of Misrule elected from the populace parodied the high offices of official religion. What larks…

Christmas Eve precludes the eventful next day, but has itself been eventful enough. It was the day in 1914 on which the Christmas truce in the trenches began and, in 1969, the day on which the Apollo 8 astronauts viewing the earth from the orbit of the moon awkwardly read from the Book of Genesis "In the Beginning…" -the most watched televised event at the time.

Here in Hong Kong, Christmas is a time to reflect on the Battle of Hong Kong 1941. This year will be the 70th commemorative anniversary of those dark days. No doubt aware of the atrocities being meted out on the citizens of the colony, Governor Young walked into the Japanese Headquarters at the Peninsula Hotel on Christmas Day and surrendered the territory. The heroism of the doomed defenders and the medical staff of the hospitals is tragic and legendary. What is less known, perhaps, is that of Gander, the Newfoundland mascot for the Canadian Royal Rifles, who died defending the wounded by carrying out a thrown hand grenade towards the oncoming Japanese. He is now recognised and has been posthumously awarded the PDSA's Dickin Medal.  

Christmas contains the 12 Days of Christmas or Twelvetide: beginning with Christmas Day, with the Feast of St Stephen on Boxing Day, Childermas (the Feast of the Innocents) and ending in Twelfth Night or Epiphany, these were supposed to be days to lighten the hearts during the longest nights of winter. There was little farm work to be done, so the ordinary folk made merry together.

In recent years we have celebrated a few Twelfth Nights  –massive feasts which have required carefully planning: twelve sets of guests, twelve courses and twelve wines (which have to be paired). These all had to be co-ordinated so that each was unique and would flow in a good and palatable sequence. So enormous was the gargantuan event, that even though the portions were quite small, we had to request the guests did not eat at all that day. Each course was previously prepared and sent out on the half-hour, the providers of that dish also bringing the paired wine. Once served, the providers then finally wash up the dishes in preparation for the next course. We began at 6 and ended at 12, although by then most guests were beyond the unbuttoning waistcoats stage and had dozily retired to sofas or were viewing the stars from around hot braziers on the roof. Making sure the food was hot enough, or sufficiently chilled, or that the soufflés had risen or that the garnish was right took a little organisation (not to say pride on my part as far as the soufflées are concerned) and the result was a stupendous banquet hard to forget and which genuinely brought folks together.

Below is the first and possibly the simplest menu from 2007: 

Starter	6.00	Crudités & Canapés	Cocktails
Soup	6.30	Butternut Squash	Sauvignon Blanc
Fish	7.00	Salmon	Asti Spumanté
Salad	7.30	Yam Sommo	Gewürztraminer
Eggs	8.00	Soufflé	California Pink White
Veg	8.30	Paneer Makhana Curry	Pinot Gris
Sorbet	9.00	Lemon	Semillon
Red Meat	9.30	Pork Meatballs	Zinfandel
Fruit	10.00	Poached Pears	Sherry
Fondue	10.30	Fondue	Chianti
Pudding	11.00	Cake	Sauternes
Ice Cream	11.30	Meringue	Muscat

It was to this particular even that our friend Kay Pike brought the meat dish. Earlier this year we sadly heard of her sudden death in the Channel Islands.

Christmas may be all about family fun and an opportunity to celebrate life, but it is also a poignant time to remember those that are no longer with us. That, I suppose, is inherent in festivals: we celebrate, commemorate, remember and look forwards -experiencing all those emotions is draining, but it must be why we do it every year.

HSBC Protestors

We have our very own anti-capitalist protestors beneath HSBC -makes you proud... Feels like a proper city!

Peace on Earth, good will to all men?

I suppose nearly all of us, and I'm making a great supposition about the blog readership here, are quite happy to yet again enter into that familiar season of Christmassyness which is all jingly bells and babes in mangers. It's a cosy time of year where most of us can be grateful for great and small mercies –health, wealth, family, friends, x-boxes and Harry Potter merchandise.

At the end of December, we are oft-times reminded of the needs of others and to be generous in considering those without. Back in 1984, I dug deep into my meagre pockets and gave all of £5 to Band Aid after having bought Do They Know It's Christmas. I felt I was doing an absolute good: them poor buggers surely needed it even more than I (even though at the time I was never so poor and five quid pretty much summed up my worldly wealth). Maybe my money helped save someone's life.

In this Chinese part of the world Christmas begins and ends mercifully late: in fact, the fuzzily-named 'Winterfest' lasts from about the beginning of December to a few days after Chinese New Year. Christmas songs are everywhere –in early January the supermarkets subtly change from carols to festive Chinese New Year firecracker noises and ubiquitous lion dance music. During this time every shopping mall and many of the tall buildings around the renowned Hong Kong harbour glitzily convey a decidedly un-religious and somewhat confused neon message of happiness without a meaning. Any symbolic significant or festive poignancy is shmaltzed and suffocated to death beneath a cotton wool and candy cane drapery.

Whatever your beliefs, the birth of a baby Jesus refers to a deeper, more meaningful idea about bringing hope into a dark, sinful, wintry world, the benign conveyance of good will to all men through the power of pure righteousness. But this is just too dangerous and revolutionary a message for our ruling elite and their supportive mercantile classes who prefer the current harmonious social order the way it is thank you very much. Thus, unto us is given instead a ridiculously childish Santa who spills his presents upon the worthy and unworthy alike –an avaricious indicator of society's belief in the equality of cash with personal fulfilment.

So, does the old Christian message heralded at Christmas actually mean anything any more? What do the seeemingly-heedless masses that do not profess any sort of faith get out of Christmas carols, sending cards and watching their kids perform in Nativity plays? It would certainly be difficult to prove that the myriad Christmas carol concerts held in every conceivable location is some sort of indicator that the attendees hold beliefs that Good King Wenceslas really did go out on the feast of Stephen or that Shepherds really did wash their socks and were visited by non-physical heavenly messengers. One could level the accusations that these outdated cultural relics remain only to pander to the overt sanctimonious self-satisfying middle-class attitudes of piety and that their original contents are now meaningless. But I would argue that the reasons people continue to sing and actually quite like carols, is they are so comfortingly familiar. At worst they are harmless –carrying with them that positive message of peace on earth and good will to all men. Uneasy indeed would be the mind that decided after hearing Away in a Manger the most appropriate religious response would be suicide bombing.

For most of us Christmas may mean family togetherness and fun, an opportunity to celebrate life the same way we did last year –especially the Turkey-fuelled snoozing through The Great Escape. It is also a poignant time to remember those that are no longer with us. It may be a garish, mad and often monotonous festival, but it is one in which we can recall with fondness other happy, simple childhood Christmasses. It brings the merriest cheer to those with whom we now live as we rather incongrously party hard whilst singing religious hymns. It also promises a future that might contain that elusive peace on earth and goodwill to all men.

Hmmm... I like Christmas.