Chesterton and Christmas: A SERIOUS AFFAIR Wednesday, December 16, 2009, Pope Auditorium, Fordham University, New York City with Fr. Ian Boyd, is a Canadian priest of the Congregation of Saint Basil and an internationally recognized Chesterton scholar and is the author of The Novels of G.K. Chesterton (London 1975). For many years he was Professor of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Currently, he is a member of the Department of English at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. Fr. Boyd also lectures on the subject of "Sacramental Themes in Modern Literature." Among the Christian authors whose work he discusses are T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Piers Paul Read, Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh. Fr. Boyd is the Founder and Editor of The Chesterton Review and the President of the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture based at Seton Hall University. Mr. Tony Hendra, born in England, was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside the likes of John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor. After he moved to the U.S., he became one of the founding editors of National Lampoon magazine. In the early 1980s Mr. Hendra helped create the British television puppet show Spitting Image. He also edited Spy Magazine for a period in the 1990s. His most notable acting role was in This Is Spinal Tap, as the band's manager, Ian Faith. He received acclaim for his 2004 memoir Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul. Dr. Dermot Quinn is Professor of History at Seton Hall University, a member of the Board of Advisors of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture and a member of the Editorial Board of The Chesterton Review. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and New College, Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1986. He has written extensively on Chestertonian themes, has authored three books and many articles and reviews in the field of British and Irish history. Mr. Christopher Vath was born in New Orleans. He attended North Texas State University where he received a Bachelor of Music Degree in Piano Performance with Joseph Banowetz. He has worked as composer, arranger, and pianist in the field of commercial music. Since 1996, he has been “Talking Music,” a lecture concert series which attempts to lead the listener to the ultimate questions of humanity through great works of music. In 2005, in addition to his Weill Hall debut, he gave a private performance for Pope Benedict XVI at his papal summer residence. The Choir of Communion and Liberation, under the direction of Chris Vath, is composed of high school and university students and adults. Their a cappella repertoire extends from Gregorian chant to the 20th century and spans many countries and languages. Formed in 1994, the choir has performed both its Christmas Lessons and Carols and its Lenten choral meditation around the New York metropolitan area. They perform yearly at the Way of the Cross over the Brooklyn Bridge on Good Friday. Program First Part Poetry The House of Christmas by G.K. Chesterton About G.K. Chesterton or G. K. Chesterton, Biographical Note 2 Poetry The Nativity by G.K. Chesterton Chesterton’s love for Christmas, a conversation Second Part Choir Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (E. Poston) Rorate Caeli (S. Rossi) A Tender Shoot (O. Goldschmidt) O Bethlehem (Basque carol, arr. Poston) El Rorro (Mexican carol) Verbum Caro Factum Est (Anonymous) El Noi de la Mare (Catalan carol) Poetry The Wise Men by G.K. Chesterton Choir Nigh Bethlehem (A. Burt) Zhcho to za Predivo (Ukranian carol, arr. Barvinskiy) Crossroads: Good evening, and welcome on behalf of Crossroads Cultural Center. We would like to thank the co-sponsors of tonight‟s event, the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture at Seton Hall University (you can find material about the Institute and its journal The Chesterton Review on your chair) and the Campus Ministry at Fordham University. Among the many ways in which one can prepare for Christmas, an especially beautiful one is by spending some time in the company of G.K. Chesterton. It is always refreshing to go back to Chesterton, who has been perhaps the greatest defender of simple human experience in the English-speaking world. All his work expresses a deeply realistic attitude, a passion for life as it is, not as we would like to imagine it. This was certainly also at the root of his faith because Chesterton clearly recognized that only the Christian proposal fully values and rescues concrete humanity, with both its great desires and also its deep shortcomings. Chesterton's realistic and intelligent religiosity is well-displayed in his poems, which we have the opportunity of presenting in this unique Christmas celebration. We are exceptionally fortunate to have tonight Fr. Ian Boyd, a worldwide known scholar of Chesterton who, with Dr. Dermot Quinn, another profound expert of the great English author, will converse about his love for Christmas and, in doing so, will help us to reflect upon the great Christian event. To this end, we will listen to some poems by Chesterton offered to us by Mr. Tony Hendra, and we will enjoy the choral pieces from various traditions performed by the Choir of Communion and Liberation directed by Christopher Vath. You will find some essential information about all the protagonists of tonight‟s event in the program you have received. And now, I am delighted to hand the microphone over to Mr. Hendra. Hendra: (reads The House of Christmas, by G.K. Chesterton) There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, 3 Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay on their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honour and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun. A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam; Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home; We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost - how long ago! In a place no chart nor ship can show Under the sky's dome. This world is wild as an old wives' tale, And strange the plain things are, The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war; But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star. To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home. Quinn: Tonight we are going to celebrate a man and a moment. The man is G.K. Chesterton, and the moment—which is momentous indeed—is Christmas. They are well matched. “Joy,” Chesterton said, “is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” And Christmas is, of all seasons, one of joy, of laughter, of the company of friends. And we will celebrate it in poetry, in music, in conversation, and maybe a little humor thrown in along the way. I know the music will be good. I know the poetry will be good. As for the conversation, I know only that it will be a conversation—that is to say, it could go anywhere at all. 4 That, too, would be Chestertonian. For Chesterton was himself a wanderer. He was a journalist, novelist, playwright, philosopher, and friend— above all, a friend. This great giant of a man—this Fleet Street phenomenologist, this loveable genius—has been a friend to millions who have never met him. He has kept them warm on a winter night. He has shown the way in the darkness of the world. And in his Christianity, we see, too, another kind of wandering—a journey round the world to discover the place he had never really left. “What could be more delightful,” he asked, “to have all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there?” So if we wander, forgive us. If we miss the path, we will find it before the night is out. Because Christmas is nothing if not a retracing of steps, a stumbling path to Bethlehem. And what shall we find there? A child in a manger. A star in the east. We will find, as Chesterton said, “that home behind home for which we are all homesick.” We can only take a sample of the universe, he once said, “and that sample, even if it be a handful of dust (which is also a beautiful substance) will always assert the magic of itself and hint at the magic of all things.” Christmas is not a sample of the universe. It is the universe summed up in a Mother and her Child.