Hey. Winnie again. Just spent an hour on G's lap while his Lordship was checking his manor. We watched a Gaither xmas show he'd recorded. I've told you about them before, and how he isn't a christian, but he likes the country music. He loves the melodies that a lot of songs don't have anymore. At the end, they had a man playing a carol called Silent Night on what G said was a harmonica. G's eyes were watering. I don't why his eyes were watering as I'm not scabby at the moment, so he shouldn't be allergic to me now. Then he started singing it to me, but in strange words I haven't heard him use before. He said after that even though he doesn't believe the nativity story as it's portrayed, it was still a very important carol, and he'd sung it to me in another language that other people use called German...
He said he learned it when he was young and first heard a recording of a show called "Oh what a lovely war" about World War 1. He said there was a christmas-time in that war when the soldiers including his grandad Tom just stopped fighting and met each other to say Merry Christmas in no man's land (which is like the car park here that we call no-cats-land, except we don't kill other cats in it.) Afterwards they killed each other again. I said I didn't understand that. He said nor does he.
He said that he has worked with people from all over the world, and he worked in Germany for a while. He said that he liked to learn from people from other cultures to try and understand the human stupidity of war. He'd met, worked and spoken with people from all over the British Isles, Germany, France, Holland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Italy, Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, India, Pakistan, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, China, Korea, Japan and many more.
He says what is strange is that at some point, all of those peoples armies had been trying to kill one or more of the other peoples population, and many had "owned" some of the other countries and treated the people who lived there badly, yet when they met as individual people, they just got on together. They could enjoy the differences in their cultures, and find interesting philosophies and food to share to enrich their own. Even in their different religious outlooks, when they started talking, there were more similarities than differences.
I asked why they still fought then. He said it was politics, people wanting power to control others for their own gain. He said it was the worst bit of being a human, innocent people getting hurt by others greed and malice. He said that many years ago there was a telly game that was called "It's a knockout" in England, but when played on a European level it was called "Jeux sans frontieres" which he says is another language called French. It meant 'game without frontiers'. He said that when it started it was fun, but within a couple of years it started to get serious, and people were arguing and fighting and cheating. Over a game!? Yes, he said. He thought it was sad.
People like him like to sing, and some that are good (not him, he should really join me on the dustbins) sing each year in another international contest that is called the Eurovision song contest. He said that the songs were pretty rubbish except for a few. Many years ago, people sang their songs in English to try and build an international carreer, as so many people and countries around the world speak English. He said now they sing in their own language, and according to their own musical traditions which is good on the surface, but deep down they do it to score political points. He says that what really was a song contest is now the best way to establish what the political feelings are towards or between any country, or group of countries involved. He says that England has done badly in the last few years because they have followed America without question into other wars based on lies, and they are being punished for it. With a song contest and games!? Yes, he said.
It's another reason why he liked the Gaither show we watched tonight. It was filmed in Birmingham Alabama USA, and there were people from every race and colour on the stage. The man who sang one song loudest was black. G said that happened only because one very brave lady called Rosa Parkes one day said that she would not give up her seat on a bus to a white person in days when black and white people kept apart in that area. The song had a chorus that went:
Love in any language, straight from the heart, pulls us all together and never apart. When we learn to speak it, all the world will hear, "Love in any language, fluently spoken here".
They sang that song just before the harmonica man played Silent Night. G said that's why he felt singing it to me in German was the right thing to do. I don't understand a lot of the things that G and Dan tell me about how people behave, that's why I'm a bit nervous of them, and why I think Dan has so much contempt for them. Tonight, I found out that people don't really know how to behave with other people, and that many of them are very scared and suspicious about each other.
He says the whole christmas thing is a lie anyway, and was just created by the church to take over the Pagan Yule season celebrating the Winter Solstice and the end of the darkness with the birth of a new year. He says records show Jesus was born in March heralding the "Age of Pisces" according to the Essenes, but most people don't care about that, they're too busy fighting over this year's must have computer game in John Lewis. He says Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas) was traditionally wearing green in all of the Northern European versions of him, and Coca Cola Company made him red in the 1950's to match their product. People don't remember very far back.
It makes a lot of what I've seen and heard going on around the last few days a bit incomprehensible. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men..... for a day..... then go back to the killing and bickering..... I think it's why G says "I don't really do christmas, except for the kids." I don't think I would either. It's not the reason he made the kids who came carol singing go away and come back when they could sing something other than "We wish you a merry christmas" though. He told them that was a greeting, and not a carol. He said he'd pay for a carol, and not a greeting. They came back and sang "Away in a manger" to him really sweetly, so he paid them. Danny says he always does that because he's a shitbag and thinks christmas is humbug. I think he is just trying to keep some kind of integrity in the season so full of bullshit. I admire him for it, and I wish him well.
Most of all, I hope all you people, all over your world, learn a bit more in the coming year about love without frontiers. Otherwise, you are worse than animals.
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