Christmas in Oxford

I’ve never actually spent a Christmas in Oxford, as I arrived there in January for my semester abroad, and flew home to spend Christmas in Texas with my family during my subsequent year there. But I’ve been through most of a December and nearly a whole season of Advent in Oxford. And lately I’ve been remembering.

The Christmas decorations there are more subtle than our over-glitzed, super-technological, decked-to-the-hilt American trappings. Besides the lovely, tasteful window above (Maison Blanc is a French bakery in North Oxford), I remember a big tree on Broad Street strung with colored lights, cardboard and foil decorations dangling from the ceilings of pubs, and snowflakes made of blue lights in the windows of Queen’s Lane Coffee House. And while St. Mary’s Church got into the spirit, they were careful not to overdo it:

St Aldates, my beloved church, put on two carol services before Christmas, with a Christmas-carol choir, of which I was a part. The song lineup was hardly orthodox – it featured Hillsong’s “Savior King” along with the more traditional carols – but oh my, it was fun, and we all dressed up in elegant black and munched cake and tea in the parish center before the services, and sang our hearts out on “Once in Royal David’s City” (which has a melody I still can’t hum) and other, more familiar songs like “Joy to the World” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

Several weeks before that, on a cold November night, there was a packed carol service at the Sheldonian Theatre, and we sang carols accompanied by the University brass band, and my housemate Jo (who was on the organizing team) waved shyly at me from across the room. Afterward, we all streamed out into the twinkling night and walked to St Aldates for mince pies and mulled wine. And it felt like Christmas, but a quiet, sparkling, reverent version – just enough tinsel and music and cheer, mixed with friendship and hope and peace.

During the December end-of-term madness, my housemates and I decided to throw a Christmas party – so Lizzie and our friend Dave bought a tiny tree, and we found blue and silver ornaments at Tesco. Lizzie and I hung strands of icicle lights from our living-room ceiling with yards of Sellotape (and spent a lot of time leaping onto the couches to stick them back up again):

After hearing, with horror, that most Americans don’t eat mince pies at Christmas, Jo made a raft of them (as well as jam tarts, cookies and several kinds of cake). We hosted fifteen of my American student friends for a party full of jokes and high jinks and mulled cider, and Christmas music playing on my laptop. (Never mind that I was nursing a black eye from a recent bike crash and had at least three essays I should have been writing.) And that felt like Christmas, too: warmth and laughter and community.

I remember, too, the mounting sense of anticipation at St Aldates as we prepared to celebrate Christ’s birth, and feeling a tiny twinge of regret that I wouldn’t be there on the day itself. And I remember, at nearly every pub in town, a vat of mulled wine simmering on the counter, crimson with thin slices of orange floating in it, and the smell of cinnamon and allspice and cloves. (A lifesaver for this not-much-of-a-drinker girl, who will always choose a hot drink over a cold one when it’s below 50 outside.)

I love the Christmas season, wherever I am in the world – but like everything about that year, these memories of December in Oxford hold special resonance for me. Every year around this time I turn my heart toward Oxford again, and suddenly I’m in that house on Ablett Close smelling the sharp pine scent of our tree, or singing with joyful abandon on the stage at St Aldates, or holding a mug of mulled wine in my hands, sitting at a table in a dim, cozy pub, surrounded by friends.