A fictional escape from the stress of Christmas shopping
‘I’M late. I’m late. For a very important date!” I do need to make up my Christmas shopping list. I do need to get organised. Maybe if I repeat the mantra often enough I will finally get motivated.
Maybe if I hadn’t left it so late it wouldn’t appear such a daunting prospect. But I refuse to get het up, like some frantic Mad Hatter, about Christmas, of all things.
The trick is to master the art of delegation, I’ve decided. Teamwork is the answer! So I will make up that list and then invite each of my three daughters to suggest how “we” best go about things.
Actually I like Christmas. I’ve got the entire Mackay clan descending on me on Boxing Day. Yikes. I do need to get organised!
But, truth be told, I’d much rather curl up in front of the kitchen fire with a good book. And I know just the one.
Winter Tales, by George Mackay Brown, is a “superb collection of tender and compassionate tales, focusing on light and darkness, winter and its festivals, by one of the greatest story tellers of the 20th century”.
I always withdraw into GMB’s poems and stories at this time of year.
I think in December we go into some sort of emotional meltdown. Sure it is really nice to buy presents for loved ones – better to give than receive, as they say – but why is it that this annual celebration of the birth of Christ leads to so much stress and hassle? And in many cases debt... Is it just me?
I PREFER, instead, to escape into GMB’s short stories which, I know, will immediately transport me to an island idyll where a host of colourful characters will regale me with fascinating insights into their – at times rather ordinary – lives.
Mackay Brown’s fiction has, on the face of it, a rather sparse simplicity. He personally harkened for a pre-Reformation Orcades golden age which became consumed, as he saw it, by the advent of what we (in the modern world) call “progress”.
GMB railed against modernity, whilst at the same time enjoying listening to his favourite radio and television programmes. All a long way from an island but ’n’ ben, the tilley lamp, gathering peats from the moor and talking about Viking marauders as if they had just rampaged through the village.
“It is in winter that the islanders gathered round the hearth fire to listen to the stories.” Mackay Brown said. “Harvest gathered in. The ears that had listened only to necessary farming and fishing words all the year of toil and ripening were ready for more ancient images and rhythms. A tongue here and there was touched to enchantment by starlight and peat flame. Then the whole twelvemonth from Candlemas to Twelfth Night was celebrated, in story and music”.
I love the word “enchantment”!
Winter Tales contains 18 easy-read short stories. Mackay Brown, who converted to Catholicism, introduces readers to a seemingly simple island way of life where people live in harmony with the seasons, are mindful of their heritage and can sometimes transcend the mundane during magical moments in which they connect with “the mystery of light out of darkness”.
GMB saw himself as part of a continuing (though perhaps threatened) tradition of storytellers who, in the modern age, had to compete with the appeal of multimedia attractions – not least television, computers and other enticing gadgetry.
There was only one story for George Mackay Brown, though. He considered the legend of the Nazarene who preached a brief ministry around the shores of Galilee so compelling – so utterly fantastic – that, as a storyteller himself, he just knew it had to be true. He suggested it was beyond the wit of man to contrive such a narrative.
So, as you might imagine some of his Winter Tales refer to some of those events. “The Road To Emmaus”, for example, is given a modern context but refers back to events in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion.
Be assured there is nothing remotely preachy in George Mackay Brown’s literature. He shares a story; make of it what you will. The shipwrecked mariner, the laird’s son, the island empty of people for 50 years, the Viking earl on a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a retired skipper, drowned fishermen reincarnated as seagulls... Mackay Brown’s range is seemingly without limit.
So, I would prefer to snuggle into the fireside, dram in hand, a plate of oatcakes topped with crab meat and escape into stories that remind me about the real things that matter in life. (But, yes, I know I cannot avoid the Christmas shopping...)
MY favourite in the collection is “The Woodcarver”. It’s a story about Jock Sigurdson, a fisherman who lives on the fictional island, Njalsay, with his long-suffering wife, Liza.
Jock drinks too much for his own good. Liza hates it when he drinks. They often argue but somehow you just know Jock is never going to change his old habits.
He spends days shacked up in his old bothy above the shore and combs the beach for anything that will catch his eye. It’s during these long periods of isolation he begins to carve planks from fish boxes he finds washed up by the sea.
His simple carvings of the island, snowdrops, fishing boats and the like begin to earn him a reputation. His only tool is a six-inch nail he has adapted. Soon his legend grows. Newspapers talk about an Island Woodcarver of Genius. Jock has no sense of his talent or creativity. And in Liza’s eyes he’s just wasting time when he should be out working and earning.
When art dealers visit the island and offer to buy his work Jock just stands dumbfounded not knowing what to say. Liza sends them away.
You can practically hear the tide washing on the shore and taste the sea tang. You can almost feel the warm glow from the stove in Jock’s ramshackle bothy.
Jock is working on a new carving. It comes to his mind that it is Christmas Eve. He’s never been inside the kirk since his mother dragged him there 60 long years ago; then he was a young boy in an awkward-fitting Sabbath suit.
“He might have known it – the kirk door is locked. A few snowflakes whirled about him. Jock set the box with the star on it at the door of the kirk and came away.”
Understated, yes. Enchanting? Definitely.