The SEASON TO BE JOLLY

I spent a merry hour yesterday evening searching for and downloading Christmas carols. Not that we lack for piles of CDs and indeed LPs of traditional favourites in this house, but the beauty of iTunes and other sites is that you can cherry-pick what you want; you don’t have to acquire the whole album and hence a bunch of duplications.

I had been especially missing ‘Adam Lay Ybounden’, an anonymous 15th century madrigal most widely known these days in its 20th century setting by Boris Ord. We used to sing this one when I was in the school choir and I was always moved by the way Ord caught its medieval spirit without being either unduly pious about its age or unsympathetic in his own modernity.

A second favourite unaccountably missing from the CD compilations was ‘The Boar’s Head Carol’, another 15th century lyric that was later published in the collection of Christmasse Carolles by Wynkyn de Worde, great ally of William Caxton in the fledgling business of The Print and possessor of one of the most enviably distinctive names in fame’s history. ‘The Boar’s Head’ is so rumbustious a crowd-pleaser that it warms up the most perishing congregation, even in the bleak mid-winter.

Despite my knowledge that there are no supernatural powers, beings or states of being, I have absolutely no difficulty in appreciating carols or, come to that, hymns from all through the calendar of ‘Ancient and Modern’. Music is music and poetry is poetry and one doesn’t need to be put off by the illusory nature of its inspiration. A huge proportion of art of all kinds is expressive of fantasy and none the worse for that. What’s more, low-church music is very redolent of my childhood and so has a powerful claim on my emotions.

Brought up in the Anglican tradition – by which of course I mean a calm, benign and very nearly agnostic approach to worship – I was well able to distinguish between the theatre and the propaganda from an early age. Had I been a Catholic, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jainist, a Jew, a Parsee, a Zoroastrian, a Mennonite, a Sikh, an Amish or a member of any of the other faiths, I would doubtless have had a bloodier battle to escape. As it was, once I was confirmed by the then Bishop of Peterborough, I rapidly moved from being a daily reader of selected passages of the Bible (“that boy’s going to be a vicar” said my Dad, who never possessed the gift of prophesy) to the warm embrace of apostasy. In my book Common Sense (see the link in the right column), I wrote about my rationalism, but it wasn’t until this year, when I started to read Richard Dawkins and then Sam Harris (the latter of whom is nearer to my own position), that I discovered that the battle against the dangerous power of religion is at last being joined in earnest. The site richarddawkins.net has been the year’s best discovery for me and I have been greatly stimulated by the range of (often heated) discussions among people who are, at the level that counts, like-minded.

In an unusual declaration, Nick Clegg answered the question of whether he believed in god, posed on Radio Five Live yesterday, with the word “no” (at least that’s what The Guardian says; I listened to the entire phone-in on the BBC iPlayer and the matter never came up). It is rare indeed for party leaders anywhere in the capitalist world to reveal such things and Clegg was instantly transformed from being the least promising-looking Liberal Party leader since Clement Davies to a bold and interesting chap. Alas, as politicians are apt to do, he blew it immediately. “I have enormous respect for people who have religious faith,” he ‘clarified’ later in the day. “I’m married to a Catholic and am committed to bringing my children up as Catholics”. So, rather as his website cites “Jonny [sic] Cash” as his favourite singer, Clegg looks like another disingenuous opportunist saying what he hopes is the ingratiating thing rather than what he knows is the true thing.

In another part of the (same) forest, year’s end is the conventional time for the computation based upon the names given to the year’s new-born (not, one assumes, that there will have been no more over the remaining twelve days before January 1st). The Office of National Statistics – whose data, you imagine, could hardly be expected to extend beyond, say, June (say, 1994) – reckons there were 6,772 Jacks joining us this year. Thomas was the next most popular name with 5,803 votes; that is unless you count together those christened – to use entirely the wrong word – Mohammad, Mohamad, Muhamet and Muhammed, in which case Thomas is relegated to third, the M guys registering 6,368 hits.

What this demonstrates is the alarming penetration of Islam into British society. Will our children or our children’s children find themselves constrained under Sharia law in Britain? It will surely occur sooner in France, where more than five million Muslims have settled and where they are widely expected to become a majority before 2030. That’s France, our nearest neighbour on mainland Europe. In due course, Nick Clegg may find himself saying that he is “committed” to his grandchildren being brought up as Muslims. And, by the way, Islam is a faith that promises suicide bombers the attentions of the curiously precise number of 72 virgins in paradise (I don’t think the Qur'an specifies that they should be attractive or female or even indeed human virgins) and that routinely countenances murder for the 'sins' of adultery, homosexuality and being an infidel, which is to say not being a Muslim. By the time the first Muslim government is sworn in at Westminster – and don’t doubt that it will assuredly be an all-Muslim government – Adam will certainly lie ybounden.