The Carols of Christmas

Two days to Christmas, the clock had chimed the eighteenth hour of the day and I was hurrying to get out of work after another bruising day. For the first time in more than a decade, I would not work on Christmas, Boxing or New Year’s Day. I got into the car and linked my phone to the car audio, pumped up the volume and played, “It came upon a midnight clear…

… that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
from heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
to hear the angels sing…”

By the time I got home I had played the song a zillion times as it was set on repeat. Christmas mode was firmly activated. My mind wandered to Oxford Book of Carols and my days in the choir from age five, at St James’s Church, Ogoloma, Rivers State, Nigeria under the tutelage of Mr Henderson Igbikiminachin Chutamunoboma (H.I.C.) Yebusika, a handsome, kind disciplinarian with a lovely Tenor. From there to singing under Mr Chine, Choirmaster at Federal Government College, Port Harcourt.

My best carol days were perhaps under Mrs Leticia Ogali in the 1980s, my Choir Mistress at University of Port Harcourt. There was also a brief spell with Leeds Choral Society, UK under the leadership of Dr Anthony Langford. Another age of Christmas featured the Nativity plays in the children’s primary school and the years of Christmas on hospital wards and Out of Hours Clinics.

Classic FM has its top thirty Christmas Carols of all time. The Shepherd’s Farewell is in my top ten  along with In the bleak mid Winter, Born in the Night Mary’s Child, Quem Pastores Laudavere, Hark the Herald, O Holy Night, Good King Wenceslas, Away in a Manger, Silent Night and of course the anthem, We wish You a Merry Christmas!

So how are you this Christmas season? A mother carried her baby for thirty eight weeks and the baby was delivered without a breath on Christmas morning. A woman is shot dead by a policeman in Lagos. The obscene wealth of kleptomaniacs continue to be talking point as my motherland prepares for another election between entrenched corruption and a breath of fresh air. In the United Kingdom, life is tough for ordinary folks. Nurses are on strike, Paramedics are on strike. Postal workers are on strike. Rail workers are on strike. The NHS is on its knees. The USA / Mexico border remains a man-made mayhem as people continually strive to cross into the land of milk and honey with its fair share of ills from an ever widening social gap between the rich and the poor. On the other side of planet Earth, a senseless war between Russia and Ukraine fuelled by the manufacturers of arms and those wishing to change the world order has killed thousands of innocent people. In the harsh Winter many live without water or heating. Loved ones return in body bags from the frontline. As America and Europe fight a proxy war with the Russians, the silence of the other super powers of the world is deafening. Perhaps, they are taking notes.

Back home, one worries about soaring energy bills which have more than doubled, as well as the risk of falling down the stairs and breaking a limb because the hallway lights are always switched off. Long therapeutic showers are yesterday’s news and heating is held off until the layers of clothes no longer match the cold. However, the whole family gathered around the kitchen island for Christmas lunch and watched Nativity on TV afterwards. That is more than enough to be thankful for.

More than five decades of singing the Carols of Christmas, there’s always something divine about the story of the virgin birth. Despite every attempt by the modern world to change Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays, the reason for the season remains incontrovertible. That everlasting story as told by St John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” [Chapter 1]. The Carols remind us of the love of God, the humble birth of His Son Jesus Christ who is so well described by Dr S. M. Lockridge in That is my King.

What ever life throws at you this Christmas, remember after rain comes shine. It’s worse for someone somewhere. EVEN THIS SHALL PASS.

Abiye Hector-Goma is a General Practitioner based in Leeds, UK who cares about his 10k patients and the local communities where his practices are based. He is keen to pursue work-life balance with the help of better-informed patients and their families.