Geekrant vs the Grey Christmas.

Greetings Geekranters!

Welcome to another edition of my ever popular blog. Over the last few editions, it feels like I am getting into a rhythm with my writing and I hope that you are enjoying the more regular appearance of my literary offerings. You, dear readers, drive me on to continue telling my tales and I hope that they are never found to be lacking in interest or excitement.

As you may remember from my last post, Christmas Eve found Mrs Geekrant and I flying across the Atlantic, a day later than planned. It goes without saying that we would much rather have been already in the house of my parents, but sometimes the fickleness of fate and the mechanical requirements of the jumbo jet, do not listen to the desires of ordinary folks such as you or I.

So that was where we found ourselves after all of our adventures in the Windy City. On a plane, in the last possible seats we could get, a plane headed not to Manchester, as we had originally aimed for, but a plane inbound to Heathrow, London's busy hub of international exchange.

Mrs Geekrant worried about how my father would deal with our rearranged flight, as he would now have to pick us up, as he had offered to do not from an airport two hours distance across the Pennines from my hometown, but from the nation's capital. A much busier and longer journey. One that would require my father to venture from the safe haven of the North of England into the urbanised, and in many Northerners opinion, overrated, mass of the south east of England.

Now to many Americans, a journey that takes only an hour longer in driving time, would seem to be a feat knowing no great hardship. My wife's worry would seemingly unfounded and just the natural desire of a daughter in law not to put her father in law out. My American readers should, however, take note that as the United Kingdom is a much smaller nation than the United States and is in many places much more built up and urbanised, with much narrower roads and more frequent traffic jams, the journeys people undertake are often of a much shorter length.

It is one of the ways, in fact, that I see that my thinking has been affected by time here in the United States. I now see a journey of three or four hours as no great feat, whereas when I was growing up in the land of my birth it would be seen as a serious journey, requiring preparation and planning.

Luckily my father has always seemed to quite enjoy driving and as Heathrow isn't really in London proper, he saw it as merely a longer drive, not something to fret over. Still, it would have been easier if it had been the shorter journey to Manchester and also, as it happens, a prettier one.

It was raining when we landed, flying into a grey and chill London morning, all mists and drizzle. This, of course, is not unusual for the United Kingdom at this time of year. However somehow it seems antithetical to all the cultural images of Christmas that have been cultivated in our lives. Even in the UK, out of all the Christmas cards that I have seen, I have yet to see one where the picture is of a grey windswept landscape, yet many times that is what the United Kingdom experiences.

My father was waiting for us, and he was a welcome sight after all the drama and anxiety that had gone before. He stood there, looking just the same as he always had, only perhaps a little older. A tangible sign that we had completed the first and longest step of our journey and would soon be in the house of my parents and the quiet streets of my hometown.

Sometimes, even in the middle of all my writing upon the subject, I forget just how different one country feels from the other. I wager that if I moved away to France or Germany or some exotic clime in the far east indies and then returned home, I would expect a difference, if for no other reason than the fact that the language would be different. Also the speech, the faiths and the food. The United Kingdom and the United States are strange in a different way, in that, at first glance, they seem so similar. Sometimes, looking from a distance, one might be fooled into thinking they are the same culturally speaking.

If one thought that, then one would be wrong. Returning home, I felt, unbidden, the same sensation as when I first visited the United States. A sense of disorientation almost, as if all the parts of the place you live were picked up and moved 4,000 miles away from where it started and put back down in the incorrect order. So much of this feeling is, of course, subconscious in nature. A sign that looks the same as one on a street at home but not quite, a road marking that doesn't fit somehow. Landscape flashing past the window is so familiar and yet somehow so strange. How unusual a sensation it is to feel like a foreigner in your own land.

We started out from Heathrow, with Mrs Geekrant and I feeling the first echoes of jet-lag, and headed due north towards my home town, Scunthorpe and the promise of a freshly made bed. Unsurprisingly, although the rain had let up slightly, the grey skies still remained as we drove down the surprisingly empty motorways of the country that will always hold a significant part of my heart.

Still, despite my love of this land, the grey outlook of a British winter has never totally agreed with me. In American culture, Bing Crosby longed for a White Christmas, Elvis had a Blue Christmas “without youuuuuuu!” And you could argue that the Grinch really made Christmas, Green, in the end. The one thing that no American has ever sung about is a “Grey Christmas”. In the end, no American has any experience that can really compare to the completely un-festive feeling, weather-wise, of a British Christmas.

As I look back over my upbringing, I must admit that I can't really complain about any aspect of our family Christmases or any part of our basic existence in the North of England. My parents might not have been the richest people in town and they did have four children to feed and clothe, but I never felt like we missed out on anything and we always had plenty for Christmas and as for Christmas dinner...! (My mother is much more skilled in that area than she would ever admit and the food is always wonderful!)We did pretty well, all things considered.

Having said all that, as I alluded to earlier, there is one thing that always disappointed me about Christmases in the UK. That would be the weather, in particular the heavens, the miserable greyness of the climate, the dull monotony of the skies. Anyone can see the affect this has on the British psyche if they look at the difference in contempory Christmas songs in the two countries.

So when Americans choose to write songs about Christmas weather, its all about snow, the festive feeling of snuggling down with a loved one in front of a log fire, the atmosphere of a cold that brings a subtle beauty with it. Nat King Cole sings about “folks dressed up like Eskimos”, Mariah Carey cavorts around in a Santa inspired snow suit and even the Californian dwelling Beach Boys bring a hint of snow and ice to the Golden State in “Little Saint Nick”.

On the other hand it doesn't really snow anymore in Britain in the winter, unless you're on some high peak in Scotland and you've run out of Kendal Mint Cake and Mountain Rescue's out looking for you because the similarities between the Cairngorms and the Himalayas are easy to see to any British person and your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker... (sorry, that last part was Star Wars not something that might happen in the Wilds of Scotland.) I digress, of course, but the simple fact is we have no snow at Christmas, which given the British preoccupation with complaining about the weather seeps into our Christmas tunes.

So Greg Lake sings about a “veil of tears for the virgin birth”, Slade only ask if you're hoping the “snow will start to fall” and when realising it won't, move straight on to the question of Santa's sobriety on Christmas Eve, Band Aid rubs our faces in it by saying that “there won't be snow in Africa this Christmaaaaasssss!!!”. They're right, of course, but when I was a child I just wanted to know why there was no snow in Scunthorpppppeeeee!

American Christmas songs and Christmas culture in general, tell tales of a perfect yuletide moment, as if all the bad things in the world pass away in the midst of a Hallmark moment. Its not even a particularly Christian moment, as this is so much a celebration of a commercialised, secular moment, where all hatred is put away and everyone dreams of skating on the Ice Rink outside Rockefeller Centre. Peace and Goodwill to all men embodied in a festive sweater and an Andy Williams Christmas Special.

British Christmas culture is based at least in some ways upon the simple realisation that nobody has written a festive ditty called “Let it Rain” yet, (at least not outside of an evangelical Church revival service) and the truth that we're pretty certain they'll never be a song called “dirty, grey and miserable, wonderland”. We're realists after all.

Okay, so I maybe exaggerating the cultural differences somewhat. In some ways, however, I understand that this is what coming home means, it means a return to a place that you once knew so well. So well that you knew all of its ways on a subconscious level and then realising that the cultural responses are no longer automatic to you. The place you were born feels foreign and alien, not that the country you have moved to feels any better, any less alien, but is somewhat disconcerting when you feel these feelings about the place you're from.

It could be argued that there is something naturally optimistic and idealistic in the American psyche, life here is referred to as the American dream, after all. This is the land that a whole continent emigrated to and explored to find a new meaning to what it meant to live. It is generations of expectation in geographical form. It is, therefore, a place equally utopia and dystopia, dream and nightmare (for some) depending on the person, whatever else it may be though it is always hopeful.

On the flipside, the British are no less hope filled, however its certainly true that the native Brit is a realist rather than an idealist. Its not that we, as a race, are wary of dreams but we tend to use practicality to guide us rather than whimsy. Simply stated, There's no point writing about snow if rain's falling outside, no matter how much you love “Elf'. Deal with what's in front of you first and remember that idealism doesn't always put food on the table.

As we drove up the M1 and towards the steeltown of my youth, I came to an epiphany, a moment of realisation, that I fit neither nation totally anymore. I am as much a realist as these grey skies taught me to be and I have felt a cold wind rolling off the North Sea and I know that in life, to borrow a phrase from George R.R. Martin, “Winter is Coming”.

I have also though, looked upon azure blue skies at the places where the prairies begin and seen them go on forever and I am affected by the dreams that lie beyond those horizons.

I am, in my heart, somehow, a citizen of both nations, I am affected by both traditions, my cultural mindset straddling the ancient Atlantic. I am now at home as much in the Mid-West of the USA as the North of England and each land tugs at my heart. I am a student of Mark Twain and Dickens both now, in equal measure. Still though, after all that is acknowledged, British Christmas music is definitely more fun...

Till next time

Goodbye Geekranters!