AMATERIAUSM is shifting the focus of the "jolly" season from spiritual concerns. If we were truthful, most of us would admit to operating a sliding scale of value where resents are concerned, depending on who they are intended for and what they gave last year. If the presumption is that our gifts will be reciprocated - why not call a spade a spade and term this whole process trade and exchange?
Sometimes the true spirit of Christmas can be evidenced by the generosity of those who give freely and expect nothing in return a dilemma which many recipients will not relish over the coming days and one described by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his account of Christmas 1933, in his book A Time of Gifts. In it he describes his picaresque wanderings "like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar" across the Netherlands, along the Rhine and the Danube and into Hungary.
His ultimate destination was Constantinople. As a student travelling on foot, with little or no funds, he was very much reliant on the good will of those he met along the route. It was his good fortune that, in spite of the rather sinister turn which German politics was taking and Hitler's ascendant star, Leigh Fermor encountered some truly hospitable people, most notably on Christmas Eve in the town of Bingen, near Mainz.
Hospitable guesthouse
At dusk he arrived at a small local guesthouse where he intended to stay the night, rather than seek out some farmer's barn - as he was to grow accustomed to during the course of his travels.
The family who ran the guesthouse obviously were struck by the 18 year old and invited him to participate in the traditional dressing of the Christmas tree. Over a bottle of wine from the nearby Rudesheim vineyard, they sang carols and later all went to church.
On Christmas morning, as the family exchanged presents, the youngest member of the household gave the student a present. Inside the wrapping of tinsel and silver paper, was a tangerine and a packet of cigarettes. Having nothing with which to return the compliment of the little girl's gift, he was obviously embarrassed. Time ticked by as he wracked his brains for inspiration and too late he realised that he might have parted with his rather battered pencil case - but the moment had passed, and any attempt at a gesture would have seemed contrived.
A subsequent reading of the poem Twelfth Night by Louis MacNeice evoked for Leigh Fermor the poignant sense of missed opportunity at that Christmas gathering. It isn't the only thing the two writers have in common. He, like MacNeice, displays a love of classical scholarship, but both of them also had a sufficient dose of Irishness to infuse their writings with a Celtic sense of mystery. In the estimation of one commentator, Leigh Fermor is a writer with the head of a classicist and the heart of a romantic".
It is surprising that, having passed such a memorable Christmas in Bingen, he makes no reference to its most famous - inhabitarit - Hildegard dot Bingen. But perhaps this omission has more to do with the silence that prevailed until recently in regard to this phenomenal medieval mind and the Church's resentment of her talents and, most galling of all, her criticisms. The Abbess Hildegard did not, after all, shy away from upbraiding bungling abbots, and indeed those bishops and popes who countenanced corruption. And so, mysteriously, her wonderful music and incredible corpus of writing were forgotten for almost 800 years.
St Disibod
Among her less celebrated writing is a life of the rather obscure seventh century Irish monk, St Disibod. He was reputed to have left Ireland when his attempts to reform his recalcitrant flock failed repeatedly. Germany proved to be a more fertile ground for his missionary zeal and he founded a monastery in the valley of the Nahe river, near Bingen. The remains of a later monastery founded by the Benedictines (which Hildegard joined in the early 12th century) can still be seen and, appropriately, it was called Disibodenberg after the capricious Irish monk.
Patrick Leigh Fermor left snow encrusted Bingen and his hospitable hosts on Christmas morning, and by lunchtime he was once again enjoying jovial and generous hospitality. However, he is vague about the exact location, probably because the consumption of a few bottles of Johannisberger meant that he was not quite as alert as he might have intended.
Indeed, his memory of the evening's amusements is even hazier. His recollections suggest that he may have attended a party in a castle - whether this is wishful thinking, a flourish which the passage of time has bestowed, or a trick which his festive libations played on his mind, is unclear and hardly matters for readers relishing this Christmas tale. As MacNeice might have added: "it was all so unimaginably different and all so long ago".