CHRISTMAS, THAT KING JOHN AND ME by Penny Dolan

                                  DECEMBER GREETINGS!
                                     

This post is about King John, a character who worried me, especially at Christmas time. I was very young when I first 'met' him, and knew little about the tales of Robin Hood back then. Later, of course, I knew the monarch in a more historical light but not this first time, face to face.

I met 'my' own King John in a children’s poem that began with this familiar verse:

        King John was not a good man

        He had his little ways

        And sometimes no one spoke to him

        For days and days and days

        And men who came across him

        While walking in the town

        Gave him a supercilious stare

        Or passed with noses in the air -

        And bad King John stood dumbly there,

        Blushing beneath his crown.

I found my King John in ‘Now We Are Six’, a collection of poems by the writer A.A.Milne. He was the original author of the 'Winnie-The-Pooh' and 'The House at Pooh Corner' stories, all wonderfully and unsurpassingly illustrated by E. H. Shepard.

The poem was in a hardback poetry book, a gift from a beloved uncle on my fourth birthday. When I was three, he had given me ‘When We Were Very Young.’ Read again now, the book was probably meant to comfort my mother, as several poems and illustrations show wilful young children.

We had few children's books, so the pages were read and re-read, and the poems eventually learned by heart. Before the age of five, I could read these books (and any others) and knew King John very well. Too well, really. 

King John haunted the weeks before Christmas because I knew, deeply and secretly, that he was rather like me. I recall empathising (not that empathy was a word then) with this bad, sad, non-historical King John. I recognised my own five-year-old faults in him, as described in that first verse, and others that follow. 

I knew, and was often told, that I behaved badly, threw tantrums, was noisy, untidy and disrespecful, which must surely have been why no friends came to call. I must add a lot of balance by adding that my mostly loving grandparents, who were of strict army stock and dour habits, had not expected me or my parents to be living with them. Unfortunately, young children are not good at living under sergeant's orders or keeping quiet.

The king and I were both to blame.

King John does have one fine quality. He is hopeful. He hangs his thin single stocking from the mantelpiece, and then he climbs up on to the snowy roof and props a large envelope against the chimney stack, addressed as follows:

                    'TO ALL AND SUNDRY - NEAR AND FAR - F. CHRISTMAS IN PARTICULAR.'

Inside is his hand-written - and minimal-to-any-child-now - list of everything he wants: crackers, candy, chocolates, and an orange, and ending with his dearest wish: a big, red, india-rubber ball.  All night, King John dreams hopefully of the gifts. 

Waking, he finds his stocking hanging limp and totally empty. The worst, the expected, has happened

                                                    ‘As I feared, nothing again for me’.

He has been proved unlovable, even to Father Christmas - and that, surely, was the terror one felt about the threat of Christmas to come.  The not-being-good enough.

So my young heart was – and still is - transfixed by the image of King John, as he stares out of his window, watching the happy boys and girls playing in the snow. A wretched man, hopeless, self-pitying and despairing. 

And then, and then, suddenly, mercifully, the poem swerves and comes in with a full-force, poignantly redemptive ending:

        A while he stood there watching,

        And envying them all . . .

        When through the window, big and red,

        There hurtled by his royal head,

        And bounced and fell upon the bed.

        An india-rubber ball!

Oh, the relief of that moment! How, as a child, that ending gave hope! Maybe one was not totally undeserving, not entirely unlovable after all? Maybe someone loved you despite all?

Then, finally - and interetingly, from a writing point of view, - the poem ends with a great outburst from the poet himself. A.A. Milne, as shocked and delighted as his reader, shouts out as loud-capitals response. Even he, breaking the fourth wall,  cannot hold back his own feelings of relief:

        AND OH, FATHER CHRISTMAS,

        MY BLESSINGS ON YOU FALL

        FOR BRINGING HIM

        A BIG RED

        INDIA-RUBBER

        BALL!

Hooray for the relief of a Happy Ending! Hooray for catching moments of happiness! Hooray for delight! And thank you for that ending and, as shown in Shepard's fine illustration, King John's joy in that big, red india-rubber ball

Thank you for reading and listening, if you still are. This odd little poem, despite the swish and swash of seasonal ads flooding screens everywhere, still captures something meaningful and magical for me. Even if, I admit, slightly lacking in total cheeriness . . .

You can find A.A.Milne's KING JOHN’S CHRISTMAS poem online for - as they say - the whole experience. Although, by now, you might be quoting the entire poem from memory yourself  . . .

Wishing you all as easy a December as possible and a Peaceful Christmas.
Penny Dolan

                                        
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