I am feeling young today.
But it is not because I have a youthful spring in my step.
Nor am I dazzled by the heady possibilities of a world yet unexplored, the rich potential of a life yet to be lived.
No. I am feeling young like a naughty schoolboy: it’s the end of term and my essay is overdue.
This is vexing. My essay is actually finished but the editor has sent it back with questions: “Where did you find this?” “What is the source for this?” “Is this really true?”
So now I face the aggravating, pernickety work of adding footnotes, checking references and acknowledging sources.
It’s so boring.
But it’s also important. Because unless we do that work, how do we trust what we read? How do we know it’s true?
Happily, not everything needs a footnote to be true.
As Tom no doubt knows, we recognise truth when we hear it in a song. It’s the song we want to hear again.
I’m not sure of the precise relationship between Eranu, Uvavu and the truth, but I know that Vic and Bob know the difference between a truly funny gag and a dud. We laugh at the true one.
True songs and true jokes touch us more deeply than cheap knock-offs because somehow we need the truth. Yet, weirdly, this time of year, Christmas, looks nothing like the truth. And it’s not just the sheer, gaudy excess of it all.
It’s God – who suddenly, strangely, has become the precise opposite of God: infinitely weak, infinitely small, infinitely insignificant. God as a baby.
And yet Christians believe that this baby, Jesus, is what God truly is, God as the truth of love: generously given, utterly vulnerable, without status or pride, incapable of dishonesty.
It’s why Christmas, for all its tacky, phony excess, still rings true among all the bad songs and unfunny jokes. It’s a reminder of what love can be, even what we can be, given the choice and given the courage.
Now I hope, before Christmas, my essay will be done, trustworthy and ready to print.
Tragically, it has no good gags; but if it did, I could hope for no better feedback than Homer Simpson’s astute and frequently repeated observation:
It’s funny, because it’s true.
Tom Odell and Vic and Bob in the studio.
At first glance, the Christ child in the Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes (c.1475, detail above), is barely a footnote in a colossal painting. But although tiny, he is given to us surrounded by golden rays of light, as in the visions of St Bridget, adored by angels, his parents, the shepherds and even the beasts.