{"id":429,"date":"2014-12-16T10:32:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T10:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/?p=429"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","slug":"merry-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/2014\/12\/16\/merry-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Merry? Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\u2018The most wonderful time of the year\u2019 is quickly approaching. Over the next week or so many of us will skitter into the overheated realms of corporate Christmas in a slight panic, hoping to find the perfect present.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However, Evelyn Waugh was particularly dismayed in 1946 to find that hardly any of his friends or family had made the effort to buy him anything. \u2018Laura gave me a pot of caviare which I ate a week ago. My mother gave me a copy of the Diary of a Nobody<\/em>. But for these I have had no presents though I have given many. I should like to think that from 29th<\/sup> October [the day after Waugh\u2019s birthday] onwards friends in all parts of the country were thinking \u201cWhat can we give him for Christmas?\u201d and hunting shops and embroidering and continuing to find me unique and delectable presents. But it is not so.’<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is all rather sad and we might even feel quite sorry for Waugh, having gone to the trouble some days earlier of signing sixteen copies of his travel anthology When the Going was Good<\/em> to give as Christmas presents. This generally curmudgeonly attitude to Christmas was developed very early on in Waugh\u2019s life, he wrote the following at the age of 16: \u2018Like birthdays, Christmas gets duller and duller. Soon it will merely be a day when the shops are most inconveniently shut\u2019. And it continued to the very end of his life, though it seems by 1960 Waugh had accepted that there was little point in complaining about it: \u2018Christmas. All that remains of Bethlehem is the breakdown of communications; no room in the inn. We adopted the heathen festivals. We must not whine now that the heathen are taking them back again\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Brideshead<\/a>

Christmas at Brideshead in the 1981 Granada TV adaptation.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christmas also appears in a melancholic mood in Brideshead Revisited<\/em>. Sebastian\u2019s alcoholism has reached a critical level by Book Two and it transpires that he has been brought forcibly back from Constantinople to Brideshead Castle by Mr. Samgrass \u2013 though they still miss Christmas Day, arriving two days later. Charles arrives at the same time and shares the following exchange with Sebastian:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Yes I was determined to have a happy Christmas.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Did you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I think so. I don\u2019t remember it much, and that\u2019s always a good sign, isn\u2019t it?\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is an offhand comment by Sebastian, but nonetheless expresses his deep dissatisfaction with the world he inhabits. His drunken escapades abroad may not have been the healthiest environment, but the stifling surroundings of his childhood home actually end up spurring him onto further destructive behaviour. Indeed, I think the scene in which Sebastian drunkenly reappears at the dinner table after absconding from the hunt is one of the saddest in Waugh\u2019s novels:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018A blow, expected, repeated, falling on a bruise, with no smart or shock of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another like it could be borne \u2013 that was how it felt, sitting opposite Sebastian at dinner that night, seeing his clouded eye and groping movements, hearing his thickened voice breaking in, ineptly, after long brutish silences\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is interesting to look through Waugh\u2019s Christmas grumblings because they are so consistently<\/em> melancholic \u2013 and having spent the last year trying to reconcile Waugh\u2019s often contradictory statements about art and aesthetics it is rather refreshing, if also rather sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \u2018The most wonderful time of the year\u2019 is quickly approaching. Over the next week or so many of us will skitter into the overheated realms of corporate Christmas in a slight panic, hoping to find the perfect present.   However, Evelyn Waugh was particularly dismayed in 1946 to find that hardly any of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[13,12,14,9],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-uncategorized","tag-brideshead-revisited","tag-christmas","tag-diaries","tag-evelyn-waugh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}