Glad tidings from Burgundy

Advent: I am sure that all readers deplore the vulgarly commercial aspects of the pre-Christmas season as much as I do. But over the weekend, a quietly Christian friend made a gentle accusation of hypocrisy. I had been talking about a couple of festivities, evoking the ghost of bottles past, while looking forward to other imminent events and relishing the spirit of the bottles to come. Was this all that the glorious festival meant to me? my friend enquired. On the eve of the great event in Bethlehem, the great dramatisation of splendour and pathos, of hope and renewal, of joy — but also of foreknowledge that the road from the manger would lead to the Cross — was the Christian message nothing more than Nunc est bibendum? If so, what, apart from snobbery, differentiated me from the plastic music of Oxford Street?

I had no ready answer. There was one obvious retort: that anything that leads to the castigation of fake music deserves a less tainted name than snobbery.