CHRISTMAS LETTERS

It's too late to write these and send out now if you haven't already done so.

We didn't.

We never do.

We received the usual long one from some friends who have been sending them out for the last 30 years or more.  It usually sits in the easily recognisable envelope for a couple of weeks before The Old Girl summons up the energy to open and read it.

Christmas Letters have been around for a long time. I bet you don't know, although Robert might, that the original Christmas Letters were the Gospels written by the, um, gospellers I suppose.
Only a few of these survive today, the most commonly known ones are those written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but there were others that, over time have been quietly forgotten about if not deliberately eradicated.

The word Gospel is from the Old English god-spell which means "good news" or "glad tidings" and was used a bit by Paul (or Saul), you know, that joker who was always bothering the Corinthians and the Ephesians with letters - sort of like early version of SPAM.

Now as well as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the other most famous gospels were those written by Peter, Thomas and Judas. These were all quietly disappeared for obvious reasons (to those religion-savvy people out there) but in short Peter couldn't be relied upon because he wrote upside down; Thomas' veracity was in doubt and Judas - well you all know about Judas.

Matthew and Mark largely wrote for Jewish audiences and banged on a bit about the kingdom of god and stuff like that.

Luke wrote for Gentiles and sought out a different demographic - the Poor. A bit like Donald Trump appealing to all those disenfranchised red-necked and toothless mid-West crackers in the USA.

John, the youngest went for the 'dude' market lacing his writings with Hunter S Thompson and William Burroughs-like acid-trip and drug hallucination imagery.

Its a pity (in historical terms) that the Gospels of Nigel, Eric, Uncle Jeffery and Great-Aunt Ruby aren't still around.

Nigel was a bookkeeper (scroll gatherer really) and 'entertained' his audiences with endless recounts of the plusses and minuses in the temples accounts and would regale everyone with hilarious stories about how the books nearly didn't balance until he found that shekel that had rolled under the tabernacle. I think that the disappearance of Nigel's gospel isn't due political or religious misgivings, it's probably been screwed up and hidden up a chimney somewhere by someone who had just had enough.

Eric, also known as Eric the Odd wrote his gospel in a way that was pitched towards children - kind of like Enid Blyton but with more overt sexual innuendo. His references to the turgid member of god needing to be succored etc. finally got to be too much for the church police and so. like Jimmy Saville, old Eric has now been binned.

Uncle Jeffery initially wrote his gospels in a lively spirited manner talking of Christ's adventures performing miracles - sort of Boy's Own stuff. Eventually, with senility settling in he repeated himself a lot and kind of forgot about Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost completely and rambled aimlessly about shooting tigers in Bengal and chasing elephants in Africa. Sad really.

Great-Aunty Ruby could have been the most famous gospeller. Unfortunately there were a couple of things against her. She was a woman (supposedly but no-one dared to check) and she smelled a bit funny - a combination of urine and musk that was a bit off putting when you got close to her. Since, in those days gospellers didn't have the benefit of social media platforms to broadcast from and, with no sound amplification equipment, listeners had to get up close, her gospelling days were numbered.
This was a shame as her anecdotes and tips from anything from cooking to dating would have been useful to young people today not unlike Richard (of RBB)'s pissy pithy sayings in Italian.



I hope that this has been useful and, if you want to inform everyone of your fabulous year, start preparing that letter earlier next year.

So long.