DECEMBER 2025
Dear friends,
I’m writing this from a very snowy Canada, where we landed last night and will be spending Christmas with family. We travelled via Iceland where we spend 3 wonderful days exploring the quirky streets and shops of Reykjavik (see photograph above), the Lopi wool factory (after 10 years of knitting Icelandic jumpers!) and a trip out into the wild otherworldly landscapes to see geysers, waterfall and immerse in some hot springs. Iceland really is such a cool place with such a feeling of freedom and unique creativity. There’s a real link with Ireland that spans centuries - a shared feeling of independence and identity that goes deep. And a similar human scale to the communities. In short - I loved my time there and look forward to visiting again and perhaps bringing some music.
THE CHERRY TREE CAROL
As many of you can probably relate, the more mainstream Christmas music which gets piped into just about every speaker at this time of year can get quite wearying to our aesthetic and spiritual senses, so this has been my little rebellion each year. It's always interesting and fun to go in search of deeper and darker traditions which are still there to find, if one knows where to look!
This year I chose the ancient 'Cherry Tree Carol' which is thought to have originated in the 15th century in England as part of the 'N-town Plays' from Norfolk. It is based on an apocryphal story of Mary asking Joseph to pick her some cherries as she is 'with child' and Joseph getting angry and telling Mary to 'let the father of your child pick you some cherries'! Jesus then commands the cherry tree to bow down from Mary's womb, and then Mary gathers cherries while Joseph just stands around. I can feel his grumpiness. There's something quite charming about a story about the holy family having a domestic argument and harbouring grudges and annoyances. Maybe Joseph was particularly 'hangry'?
To me, I love these stories that humanise the more sanitised versions of these divine interventions. The heart of Christmas to me is that somewhere in the midst of our messy humanity, with all our grumps, annoyances and hunger, there is some beauty and illumination, some sort of holy 'normal-ness'.
This recording has been added to my ever-growing ‘Christmas’ album which is all available for download from bandcamp. It’s my gift to you! You can go there and download it all for free. And if you want to give back a little there’s also the option to pay whatever you’d like, and all the proceeds will be donated to Musicians Without Borders, a charity supporting music teachers and music therapists in Gaza.
The yule cat is an Icelandic Christmas tradition - Grýla and Leppalúði are the parents of the Yuletide Lads (13 troublemaking brothers!) and this is their cat. He eats people who don’t get given new clothes for Christmas.
LISTENING RECOMMENDATIONS
It was so great travelling on Icelandic Air as they have a whole catalogue of Icelandic artists to listen to in their entertainment. I spent a good few hours checking out some of the albums, although there was no way I could listen to it all - Iceland has a very rich music scene!
YLJA ‘DAETUR’ - This is a really beautiful and recent record of old Icelandic folk songs. So many of these albums can sound a bit trite and cheesy, but I checked this one out and just couldn’t turn it off. The guitar lines sound like Joni Mitchell, and the 2 voices are such haunting, perfect and unusual harmonies.
JDFR ‘MUSEUM’ - I played with Jofridur about a decade ago at Connolly’s of Leap and contributed some violin to a little film she was making the next day. She was great then, and has built a body of work since - so it was cool to see her album pop up on the plane! Beautifully made electronica songs.
BJORK & TRIO GUDMUNDAR INGOLFSSONAR ‘GLING-GLO’ - I looked across and my son was enjoying listening to this - it’s from 1990 and features Icelandic kids songs sung by Bjork (at that point she was in ‘The Sugarcubes’) with a jazz trio. It’s fun and a bit mad and very jazzy.
Wishing you all a peaceful Christmas, and I hope you don’t get eaten by the Yule Cat!
Justin