A month ago the chaplain's secretary phoned. Would I read a lesson on Christmas morning? Normally I agree and wait to see if I am the warm up man with Isaiah chapter 9, or top of the bill with Luke chapter 2. This time I stammered an apology. After an unbroken run since 1971 I would not—barring accidents—be in hospital this Christmas.
Nor would most of my colleagues. In our consultants' dining room there would be mince pies and a dwindling band of doctors—some reminiscing about Christmas Past when the ward sister sipped an unaccustomed sherry and the senior consultant, in a funny hat, carved the turkey. Neither she nor he would have dreamed of taking Christmas off.
My medical generation experienced the end of an era stretching back to Dickens' time, when the festive season lasted only a day or two.
In A Christmas Carol, Fezziwig's clerks worked normally on 24 December. Not until 7 pm did their boss give the signal to roll up the carpet and start the dancing. And they were back in the office on Boxing Day.
Nowadays parties begin in early December, and the 25th is a blessed relief for everyone except the very young.
Our family stoutly maintained the old tradition. From an early age, our children took it for granted that after Santa had called, you went to hospital to show your toys to the midwives. Later, as students home for the holidays, they automatically woke up, programmed to walk the wards.
In recent years skeleton staffs of nurses began to look puzzled by our presence, and patients became fewer and iller. The lord mayor, the Salvation Army band, and our family followed one another around, hoping to find a patient who could speak or a Christmas mum who could smile while holding on to her caesarean stitches.
This year both children spent the winter abroad—trying, perhaps, to let us down gently and break a 26 year habit. My wife and I decided that rather than buy a tiny turkey and one cracker we too would leave town.
The chaplain was understanding. The nurses chided me, not for going, but for returning early and missing a pagan Hogmanay in Edinburgh.
Please, anything is better than that, even Isaiah.