Not a representation of the Corona Virus or a Russian Sputnik but the Christingle Orange.

Neither Our Gert nor myself are religious people.  I was for a few years verger at Selby Abbey but my interest was always historical rather than spiritual.  But we did used to attend Sunday School with our kids when they were little.  We wanted to expose them to Christian worship so that they might make up their own minds when they grew older whether to buy into it or not rather than being persuaded by our disinterest.

Personally mind, I quite enjoyed it; not for the worship but rather for the “communion”.  I’m not talking that bread and wine stuff; I simply mean the spirit of community from sharing the experience with other people in the village.  And the biscuits afterwards, of course.

The vicar for donkey’s years was George.  Some said he went to school with Methuselah and he enjoyed that.  He was hesitant in his manner, a lifelong bachelor and seemed terrified in the presence of women.  He’s been retired for 10 or more years now but is still knocking about and looking no older than in photos of sepia brown I have seen him in.

Another recollection is of some of the various celebrations which mileposted the Christian calendar.

For the Harvest Festival the kids would have practised some of their songs for weeks beforehand at the local school.  My kids tell me that an attritional battle the teachers had was to get the kids to sing

“Water, water of life”.

Being Yorkshire, it always defaulted to

“Watter, watter of life”.

“No, children.  Water, water of life”

The best the teachers could manage was to get the kids to remember once but twice was a bridge too far. So it came out in the service as

“Water, watter of life”.

Another memory is of the Christingle Service.  For those of you who will not be accompanying me to Heaven, the Christingle Service was held at the start of Advent.  It is essentially a children’s service celebrating brotherly love throughout the world and is symbolised by shoving cocktail sticks into an orange that has a red ribbon wrapped around it.

Anyroadup, the point is this.  One of the vicars we had after George was from daarn saarf and she had a minor speech impediment.  The kids would all sit together on the front pews and eagerly wait for the vicar to begin her explanation of its symbolism.  Specifically they were waiting for her to tell us that the love and blood of Christ were

“wepwesented by a wed, wed wibbon wapped all awound the world”.

We gwown-ups who smirked would surely fwy in the bwimstone pits of hell”.