This Christmas, recite a poem or a carol for your loved ones

Those who believe that poetry and other forms of art are insignificant are verily declaring themselves spiritual deserts.

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Following a difficult year of omnipresent Covid fearmongering, the Christmas period will bring a welcome relief from the doomocracy that has engulfed our sceptered isle. And at Christmas, I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth. Like many of us, I shall be spending Christmas surrounded by friends and family with a drink in one hand, a silly santa hat on my head, the Queen on the telly and a scrumptious roast dinner in front of me.

Another Christmas indulgence of mine is sitting by the roaring fireplace and plunging myself into the depths of the most splendid verses written by the great poets and authors of our blessed plot. In Dickens's A Christmas Carol, the protagonist Scrooge's nephew exclaims that "there are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas amongst the rest". In recent times, I would add literature to that list. Our precious stone set in the silver sea has arguably produced the greatest writers on this planet, yet we seldom find our children engaging in the wonders of their work.

Earlier this year, I was bitterly disappointed to read of Ofqual's decision to allow GCSE English students to completely drop poetry, if they so wish. As expected, the debate surrounding the exam regulator's decision was littered with the usual regurgitated utilitarian nonsense. Poetry is superfluous to our children's future CV, some parents espoused, and must therefore be removed from all school curriculums.

Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter. In the words of Sir Roger Scruton: "Beauty is an ultimate value – something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations." Throughout the bleakness of our current Covid predicament, I find it a great shame that some people no longer wish for their children's minds to be furnished with such beauty for the remainder of their lives.

The best moments in reading, according to British playwright Alan Bennett, are when we come across thoughts, feelings, or a way of looking at things which we had believed special and particular to us – set out in front of us by someone whom we may have never met before but whose hand has come out and taken ours. Reading poetry gives our life a gratifying resonance. Its words proffer a different understanding of life, a way of seeing things in a different light. Those who believe
that poetry and other forms of art are insignificant are verily declaring themselves spiritual deserts.

Our literature is equally a profound part of our national identity. Indeed, a nation is an eternal social contract between the deceased, the living and the unborn in which a continuous chain of giving and receiving is established in order to bequeath the treasures of a nation to future generations. We thus have an obligation to teach our children these things. Those with no memory of their nation's literature and music are never truly conversant with its history. Cultural and historical amnesia is thus a nation's first step in suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes until it eventually becomes the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.

If you do wish to dust off your nan's old poetry book this Christmas, may I make one more recommendation? If one is to read poetry as though one were reading a newspaper, the poem may sound lethargically flat, and it will certainly feel as if it were missing a certain dimension. I thus recommend that you recite your poetry out loud for all your loved ones to hear and appreciate.

And finally, pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to the whole Bournbrook family!