Home for Christmas with Brian Sewell

BRIAN SEWELL

The Evening Standard’s art critic has long eschewed the fripperies of the festive period for a fuss-free gourmet meal and signing cheques for charity. He lives in Wimbledon

There was a time when Christmas meant something to me, when I was happy to believe the story of the stable, its ox and ass and manger, and celebrating the birth of Christ was very much part of the annual rhythm of my life. It was my parents’ custom on Christmas Eve to put a bird in the oven and a pudding on to boil, go to Midnight Mass with all its carolling and, in the spirit of the hour, bring stray friends home from church to have a jolly and informal supper that might not draw to a close until three or four in the morning. This justified a lazy stay in bed on Christmas Day followed by idle do-nothing hours, a fuss-free diet of cold cuts, and early to bed, with normality restored for Boxing Day.

Alas, no longer. As my faith withered, so did my inclination to celebrate the day of Christ’s birth — indeed, to acknowledge Christmas with any of its customs seemed hypocrisy. Perhaps I took too puritanically my abandonment of Christianity and Christmas; the Christian adoption of pagan customs seemed reasonable enough as long as it was driven by fundamental belief, but without that belief the birth of Christ, his shepherds and his kings, were reduced to pretty legend as irrelevant as the holly, the ivy, the yule log and other druidical pre-Christian appurtenances. There were, eventually, to be no such signs of Christmas in any room, flat or house in which I lived.

What then do I now do for Christmas? I spend it with one friend in similar circumstances, the hatches battened down. We think a little about food — not about geese, ducks, turkeys and the irksome businesses of stuffing and traditional accompaniments, but about things that we never have and that take only half an hour to prepare — tournedos Rossini served us very well last year, a Châteaubriand and petit pois the year before, and I also recall a steak sandwich so thick with caramelised onions, tomatoes and mustard in its ciabatta that both hands were required and its several juices dribbled down our chins — pure gluttony. This year I fancy a fish pie made almost entirely with scallops and crab claws, an assortment of malodorous cheeses and a heap of grapes — no fuss at all.

And that’s the point — no fuss. Why on earth spend Christmas, or any other time, slaving in the kitchen? There are better things to do. Dogs must be walked on the Common, a longer trek than usual as a treat. Books must be read, a stack of them set aside for a long break so that reading is not interrupted by work — a biography of Edward III (without whom Rodin would not have made his Burghers of Calais), a life of Frits Lugt (an old mentor and great art historian who put chocolate in my shoes on my birthday a half a century ago — an old Dutch custom), and Patrick Bade on music in the Second World War should be enough to see me through to the New Year. And as the trouble with books is that I read to remember and thus concentrate too much (I do not read novels), on television there must surely be something worth watching somewhere among its many channels, for I am at an age when I have to wind down my brain in the evening and need to be effortlessly amused, although this does not mean that the entertainment can be intellectually and aesthetically barren (as it too often is).

If I seem Scrooge-like in shrugging off Christmas, so be it. Sending no cards, lugging no tree into the house, disdaining crackers, holly, mistletoe and paper hats, giving no unwanted and ill-chosen presents and scorning all the bells and baubles suits my mood and extends my generosity, for the money not wasted on these silly fripperies goes elsewhere. Scrooge never sat at his desk over Christmas writing cheques for charities and good causes. I do. I have never before spoken of it, but dispensing this self-imposed tithe of my income is the real answer to the question ‘What do you do for Christmas?’ and if we all did it, the world might be a kinder, better place.