I am spending Christmas in the small English village of Dale Abbey.
It is a Christmas with a strange Dickensian twist to it.
We are here because this is where my wife’s sister lives.
It’s a small village in the countryside; the kind of place you see in movies about rural England.
There are only 54 houses in the village.
54 houses and a pub.
The Carpenter’s Arms.
Last night we went up to The Carpenter’s Arms for a pint before dinner.
It’s not much of a walk. It’s just at the end of the only street in the village.
The Carpenter’s Arms was built in 1880, but the village has been here since the 12th Century. The ruined Abbey, torn down by Henry VIII, is in the back yard.
Pretty much everyone in the village as in the pub. The pub is small, wood paneled, with a low ceiling and beams. There’s a fire in the fireplace and a piano.
Everyone was gathered around the piano singing Christmas carols.
My wife and I were there with her sister.
Her husband did not come along.
Her husband did not come along because just a week earlier, he walked out on her and her two children, announcing he was going off to live with his new girlfriend.
He was a British policeman. A detective.
One wonders what kind of people they are hiring in the police force these days.
But one need not wonder about the character of the British countryside.
As soon as we walked in the door, pretty much the entire village, one by one, came and embraced my sister-in-law. They hugged her and through tears, told her everything would be all right. They told their own stories. They offered whatever help she needed to get through what will surely be the difficult times ahead.
In America we talk about ‘support groups’.
Here was one I could see for real.
For most of our existence we have lived in small villages. Big cities are a relatively new phenomenon – a function of the Industrial Age.
I live in the middle of Manhattan.
If something happened to me and my wife were to wander down to the bar at The Modern – as close as we can come to a ‘village pub’, I suppose, I very much doubt anyone would come up to her to offer their love and support and affection. We don’t work that way in New York, and maybe that’s not such a great thing.
Some time ago, Hillary Clinton wrote a book entitled It Takes A Village. It was all about how it takes a village to raise a child.
Maybe it also takes a village to heal a broken family.
