Gluten free Jesus

Happy Christmas to all of my Christian friends. And to the pagans amongst us, Happy Winter Solstice for three days ago. For atheists reading this, “Christmas” is an anagram of “Mr Shit Sac.” Joy to the world.

I’m in Thaxted. It’s raining. We drove here from Shropshire last night and instantly took ourselves on a walk around the town to look at the glorious Christmas decorations. There’s a little estate on the outskirts where the residents compete for the most over-the-top Yuletide displays. There are dancing snowmen, epic projections, fit-inducing flashing lights, bows on doors, sleighs on roofs and illuminated icicles. Many would say it was tacky and ghastly but I believe that anything which brings excitement and happiness is well worth doing. I imagine there are children (of all ages) who would go to that estate and feel a sense of great joy. Something we all deserve.

More traditionally festive is the Main Street in Thaxted, which has been turned into a mega advent calendar with 24 houses displaying beautiful festive windows, each of which was unveiled on a different day in the run up to Christmas Day itself. Some windows are obviously better than others. I’m rather proud to say that the best (by far) belongs to our friends Sally and Stuart, who made a massive Christmas tree out of a wooden pallet which looks an absolute picture. It was really very lovely (and very festive) to rush from one side of the street to the other trying to find which houses had been chosen to make window displays.

The parents and Brother Edward went to Midnight Mass. Obviously as an atheist who now sings regularly in a synagogue, I would explode immediately on contact with a church, so Nathan and I stayed home, and I stuck photographs from the year into a giant album. I was very amused to find out that the vicar had made an announcement that gluten free wafers would be available for those who wanted to take communion. To my mind it makes an absolute mockery of the very concept of eating the flesh of Christ. As if it weren’t already creepy enough, we’ve now got people going “I’ll only eat Jesus if he’s gluten free!”