The gospel according to Dolly Parton

Also this week: Good King Wenceslas’s winter fuel allowance and grumpy monks.

My favourite headline this Christmas comes from the Bohemian Times and reads “King Wenceslas Scraps Winter Fuel Allowance”. OK, it’s not a real headline and actually comes from the Private Eye Annual 2024, but it keeps coming back to me as I sing this carol in church. In the piece Good Keir Wenceslas argues that there is a large black hole in the finances of Bohemia and blames the previous king, but his reputation among yonder peasants for being “good” has been badly damaged. Perhaps it will be forgotten and next year I won’t smile at all and will concentrate on the message about the importance of charity in the final verse. Or maybe I will be thinking about how much you need individual charity when the state does not cover the basics. Who knows?

Things can only get Rutter

One of my all-time favourite cartoons in Private Eye is a group of choirboys singing heartily at a Christmas service with a member of the congregation saying, “I can’t believe it’s not Rutter.” It’s a niche joke, admittedly, with a knowledge of plant-based butter substitutes and 20th-century choral music required, but it makes me laugh every year. The work of John Rutter, as the cartoonist notes, has become ubiquitous at this time of year, but when you hear it you can appreciate why.

I went to a beautiful Advent service at St James’s Church in Sussex Gardens last week where the choir sang an adaptation of an Appalachian folk tune, “I Wonder as I Wander”. I was just reading through the programme to see who was responsible for this and it turned out to be, yes, Rutter again. It stood up well, though, even in the midst of anthem settings by Palestrina, Elgar and Britten.

A star is born

However uplifting my Christmas outings are this year, it will be difficult to top the spirituality of last year’s season. The undoubted highlight was the Dolly Parton Stampede Xmas Show in Dollywood, which was a festive rodeo set in a huge stadium. I particularly enjoyed the cowboy in a tinselly hat singing “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” on horseback who introduced the event, but the showstopper was the massive live nativity scene. This involved shepherds with real flocks of sheep attending the holy birth along with three huge camels who entered the arena bringing in the Magi with their gifts. Then the archangel Gabriel flew over our heads on a wire and released a single white dove that disappeared into the night.

We in the audience were appreciating this spectacle whilst eating an entire roast chicken (each) served by elves. The religious tableau was then followed by a pig gymkhana in which children chased small pigs who jumped over assorted fences. I am not joking. It was quite extraordinary and not in a bad way.

Watching paint dry

I did try to improve on this religious festive trip by going to Milan last week to see Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. This is a very popular painting and you are made aware of this by the fact that you are only allowed in for about 15 minutes. It is hung at one end of the refectory of a former monastery and the monks had to look at it while they were eating in silence. I am pretty sure they did not get a whole chicken each, but had to contemplate the scene over something much more austere. Leonardo took four years to finish the picture and the Abbot got fed up with the disruption and complained to Leonardo’s patron, the Duke of Milan, who had commissioned the painting. Leonardo replied that if there were any further complaints he would paint the Abbot as Judas Iscariot in the picture.

We had a really good guide, who not only told historical anecdotes but also filled in the art history, painting technique and biblical symbolism. One of the innovations of the painting, she told us, was to include Judas amongst the group of apostles – rather than depict him sitting alone – to remind the monks that Judas was one of them (and, by extension, one of us). I expect this is one of the reasons the Abbot complained.

Full steam ahead

The Last Supper shows the moment in the biblical account when Christ realises that one of his friends will betray him and it has a real sense of melancholy compared to some of the more formal Last Supper pictures that were being painted at the time. Even as a somewhat rushed tourist experience it was surprisingly affecting. In fact, I may not have been so moved since I boarded the Dollywood Express steam train and received a Christmas message from Dolly herself (taped) after which the train set off and she sang a full gospel version of “Go Tell It on the Mountain”.