Editorials
Parakeets in Richmond Park and Christmas Puddings
Anne-Kathrin Kruse, 51 years old, is, with her husband, in pastoral charge of five congregations between London and Oxford.
November 25, 2008
At about 11.00 pm on Sunday evening the telephone rings. It is the day before Christmas Eve and - hard to believe, but none the less true - it is the first foggy night of the year. It is a colleague from Germany ringing. "My daughter has just rung us from London Heathrow. She has flown in from Vancouver and after a stopover in London was intending to meet us this evening. But now in London almost all flights are cancelled because of the fog. She has no money and does not know anyone in London. Where could she stay over Christmas?"
I had already been surprised by the unusually quiet sky. Our pastor's house lies directly under one of the airport approach paths. London Heathrow is an intercontinental hub and the busiest airport in the world. An aircraft flies over our house every three minutes.
Now hundreds of thousands of people are marooned in the airport terminals. All London hotels, and ferries and Eurostar trains to the continent (which the English simply call "Europe"), are fully booked. We, of course, celebrated Christmas together with our colleague's daughter.
Life in this multicultural and multireligious metropolis is fascinating, and much more colorful than the German image of London from the black and white Edgar Wallace detective stories of the 'sixties. Then the famous London fog was in fact "smog", produced among other things by the countless coal-burning fireplaces spewing out soot in large quantities. Now what were once dirty grey fronts of buildings are again gleaming white. And, in fact, it rains much less in London than in some parts of Germany, and it is mostly a few degrees warmer in London than in the surrounding countryside. Palms grow in gardens and parks, and the parakeets living in the wild in Richmond Park seem to like the mild climate. Even in winter months people sit outside in front of the cafés.
But the particularly fascinating thing about London is the way in which this metropolis has managed, since the Romans founded it two thousand years ago, to welcome and integrate people from all continents. Here over three hundred different languages are spoken, and one of the most frequent, after English, is Gujarati, an Indian dialect. Out of seven and a half million Londoners, almost one third were born abroad. Since there is no compulsory registration, it can only be estimated how many Germans live in London, something between forty and eighty thousand.
In many districts you feel as if you have been transported to India, Thailand or the Arab Emirates. Turbans, burkas, saris and kippas are a normal part of the street scene, as are different skin colors. After friends of ours had returned to Germany with their children, the children were disappointed and asked in the bus, "Why does everyone here look the same?"
The religious scene in London is correspondingly varied. Alongside the Church of England, all Christian confessions are represented, together with more than 600,000 Muslims, as well as Sikhs, Jews and countless other religious groups. London is home to the second largest Hindu temple outside India. In Central London there is the impressive Ismaili Center, the central point for Ismaili community life. London is a melting pot, but there is also prejudice and racism. Violence has greatly increased in some districts. The English class system offers many people little opportunity to improve their social status.
In this chaotic metropolis, where the traffic is more often at a standstill than freely flowing, I have been living for five years with my husband and two daughters, who regard London as home. My husband and I share between us the one-person pastorate of London-West. From here we care for five congregations. In the past, three pastors were assigned to these parishes. We have no central church hall, no church office, no hostel, and no paid collaborators apart from our pastoral assistant. The congregations are completely self-financing, out of membership dues and donations. Were it not for some highly committed people they would not be able to exist at all.
The Christuskirche congregation was founded in 1683 and initially worshipped in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace. One hundred and four years ago a German banker donated the church building. In it, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who in 1933-35 was pastor here in London and established his ecumenical contacts for resistance against Hitler, in 1934 called together a meeting of pastors, who dissociated themselves from the German state church, the Reichskirche. There is a memorial to him near the West Door of Westminster Abbey. The congregations feel duty-bound to maintain his theological legacy. The other West London congregations, in Petersham, Oxford, Reading and Farnborough, are tenants in the church buildings of other confessions. Meetings and other gatherings take place in people's homes or in pubs. Only very few of the people we are in contact with in that way seek fellowship in groups that meet regularly. Others are far too busy. The congregations are mostly composed of bankers, dealers, stockbrokers, doctors, scientists and journalists, and their mostly young families. They nonetheless expect high quality worship services, which are followed by a social time together. In addition, there are increasingly frequent baptisms and weddings. Every weekend we take two or three such services. They look for support in the religious education of their children through regular Sunday schools, children's Bible classes and preparation for confirmation.
It happens also that Frau W, who is seriously ill with heart disease and is a drug addict, requests a prison visit. She has been sentenced to fourteen years in prison for drug smuggling.
And then there was over ninety-year old Fräulein M. She came from a farm near Bad Kreuznach and in 1938 was a maid in service to the London family Astor (of the Waldorf-Astoria hotels). When after one year she attempted to return home, the border was closed because of the Second World War. She remained in London until she died a short while ago.
Or Frau L, who was brought up in Vienna as a Protestant by her Jewish parents. They had hoped in that way to shield her from the Nazis. She came to London when fifteen years old, and stayed. Her parents died in Auschwitz.
It will soon be Christmas. The Christmas rush begins here in mid-November already and the atmosphere is more carnival-like than conducive to contemplation. All through December there are lively Christmas parties in the pubs, even with fireworks. Brightly gleaming Christmas illuminations decorate the night streets. German-speakers thus long all the more for a comparatively peaceful Advent and Christmas. They meet to make Advent wreaths, go to Christmas markets, and flock to the nativity plays by the children in our congregations and to the many performances of Handel's Messiah. Particularly impressive is an international ecumenical Advent carol service in the famous Oxford University Church, with superb choral singing, Christmas carols and readings in different languages.
While the Lutherans (which is what German-speaking Protestants are called here) are meeting for worship on Christmas Eve, the British are frantically doing their last-minute shopping. Only on Christmas morning, 25 December, do their children discover what Father Christmas has brought them during the night and left in colored stockings hanging from the mantelpiece. After their Christmas service, there is dinner with stuffed turkey and substantial Christmas pudding, made with raisins, for dessert.
It remains to be seen who, from somewhere in the world, we will be celebrating Christmas with this year!