Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus

I love everything about Christmas: angels, shepherds, fairy lights, dazzling trees in public squares, carols, old movies, good will to all men, a family get together in which kosher turkey is served, a vegan Christmas pudding and – as the first night of Chanukah falls this year on 25 December – doughnuts.

I have fairy lights in my flat, sometimes even out of season and exquisite glass baubles, each one different from the other, hang insecurely from wires across my ceiling. I have no Christmas tree apart from a naked pine tree which grows in the garden. I am extremely fond of Christmas trees but it seems to me a bridge too far to have one in the house and decorate it, although I know I would enjoy doing so.

Last week, when I picked up some Chanukah candles in a Jewish gift shop, I noticed that crackers were on sale, Chanukah crackers with little dreidels and no doubt chocolate coins inside them. I felt a moment of disapproval but then thought, ‘Who am I to talk?’ I did not buy them and went for transparent dreidels with sweets inside them, for my grandchildren.

I like to go to midnight mass at a beautiful church just ten minutes away. Seven years ago, late on Christmas Eve, my youngest daughter gave birth, after a long labour, to a little girl. An hour later, turning up for midnight mass, I said excitedly to the shammas, I mean the usher, ‘My daughter just had a baby!’

His eyes swiveled anxiously round the lobby, and I explained ‘Not here! In a hospital.’

I do not speak the prayers, obviously, but I shake hands with the people around me when the congregation is called upon to exchange a sign of peace. I don’t mind being a stranger there, although there was one time when a vicar, in his sermon, said that Israel would have stopped Mary and Joseph going into Bethlehem. What did he suppose was meant by ‘Once in royal David’s city…?’

I have been a little apprehensive since then, though not enough to stop me going, and there have been other vicars, preaching on other themes. I like the scent of candles as I enter the church. When the congregants line up for communion, I remain unperturbed in my seat. I feel good will.

That is really the essential thing, the season of good will, Luke 2:14:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

It’s nice in Latin too:

Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax in hominibus bonae voluntatis

…and, since you ask, in the original Greek:

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας.

I will include here a photo I took of the tree in Muswell Hill, just outside the Everyman cinema, because I liked it.