Irritable Guests

“Christmas dinner, as described by a modern minor poet, would almost certainly be a study in acute agony: the unendurable dullness of Uncle George; the cacophonous voice of Aunt Adelaide. But Chaucer, who sat down at the table with the Miller and the Pardoner, could have sat down to a Christmas dinner with the heaviest uncle or the shrillest aunt. He might have been amused at them, but he would never have been an­gered at them, and certainly he would never have insulted them in irritable little poems. And the reason was partly spiritual and partly practical; spiritual because he had, whatever his faults, a scheme of spiritual values in their right order, and knew that Christmas was more important than Uncle George’s anecdotes; and practical because he had seen the great world of human be­ings, and knew that wherever a man wanders among men..., he will find that the world largely consists of Uncle Georges. This imaginative patience is the thing that men want [that is, “lack”] most in the modern Christmas.” ―G.K. Chesterton, “Chaucer and Christmas,” Illustrated London News, December 26, 1931

HT: Randy Booth