Christmas approaches. A time for celebration – in Bridport as elsewhere.
But also a time to recall that, for some, this is the most difficult moment in the year – a moment when loneliness and anxiety are accentuated by the fact that so many families are gathering convivially to share the festivities. Years ago, when I first visited what was then called Crisis at Christmas, it came home to me that, for people who either haven’t got friends or relations or, for one reason or another, are separated from them and stranded alone, Christmas can be anything but convivial.
Crisis itself – and many other wonderful voluntary bodies besides – do marvellous work in partly, at least, making good this deficiency.
But, in the end, there isn’t any real substitute for friends and relations. As the tale of Mr Scrooge abundantly shows, no amount of material prosperity will fill the gap created by the absence of people you are fond of at Christmas. And it is a bitter irony that there are people in West Dorset and everywhere else in the country who find themselves in this position – some, desperately poor; others, much better off; but all deprived of the social fabric that makes Christmas what it is for the rest of us.
Restoring this social fabric, where it has disintegrated, is the most important single thing that we could do to mend the broken parts of our society – but it is also one of the most difficult.
Part of the answer, here, is to recognise that there is often a considerable distance between action and effect.
I have noticed this particularly during the past couple of months as a result of being one of the many people in my own village of Thorncombe who helps out with serving at our new community shop.
Bringing this new shop into existence has had an extraordinary effect on the village. As one person said to me the other day, “I have met and talked to more people in the village in this shop in the last few weeks than in the last 10 years”. The fact of doing something together (and of being so delighted with the incredibly smart and welcoming shop that the village has created) has forged an enormous amount of what the sociologists call “social capital”.
In other words, the social fabric is being restored, not by some fancy scheme or commission, but by the people of the village themselves coming together to do something together that makes them feel part of something.
And that, surely, is the real spirit of Christmas.