Over a few dozen years our house has developed a holiday tradition that we would like to share, but it takes a bit of backstory for the non-Canadians. CBC Radio has a program called “As It Happens”, which is a newsmagazine type of program. If you’re not familiar with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, you can listen live online at www.cbc.ca/radio The CBC is somewhat like the BBC, or NPR, but with more skill and less political agenda.
Every year on their last show before Christmas, or on Christmas Eve, “As It Happens” runs a Christmas story, narrated by the late Alan Maitland. The story is “The Shepherd” by Fredrick Forsyth, a short story Forsyth wrote for his wife in 1976. The narrative is the story of an RAF jet fighter pilot flying from Germany back to his home base in the UK on Christmas Eve 1957. His aircraft has multiple failures enroute and is eventually lead to a fog-shrouded runway at a disused RAF wartime base by a shepherd aircraft (an old DeHavilland Mosquito) piloted by a mysterious figure.
“The Shepherd” is not really a Christmas story, in that there is no Pere Noel, Scrooge, Tiny Tim, or magical reindeer, just a solitary jet pilot struggling to get home for Christmas. The twist at the end of the story is that the Mosquito shepherd aircraft has the registration of JK (Jig King) and guides the now crippled Vampire fighter to the fictional RAF Minton as the Vampire runs out of fuel moments after landing on the fogged-in runway. The pilot, the narrator of the story, attempts to find out how and who shepherded him down. The answer is the mysterious Johnny Kavanagh, (not Jig King!) who flew the same missions in the war, shepherding crippled bombers home from the North Sea. Except Johnny Kavanagh went missing in his Mosquito on Christmas Eve 1943, vanished over the North Sea.
That short arc of the story doesn’t really do it justice, nor does the describing it as being read by Alan Maitland. Radio storytellling, when done right, to paraphrase Garison Keillor, goes directly from the solid to the gaseous form without going through the liquid state. Keillor should know: His Lake Woebegon stories on “A Prairie Home Companion” routinely weave and paint pictures in your head more vivid than any that can be committed to film, tape, DVD or flip book doodles.
I first heard “The Shepherd” in 1979, sitting the control room at a small-market radio station up the Ottawa Valley, filling in the hours as the new guy who worked the crap shifts, like Christmas, New Years and so on. Ever since, I think I have missed the reading only a time or three. Every year we tune in “As It Happens”, turn the lights down and listen. We don’t read a book, answer email, or have the TV on. We actively listen to the radio the Old Skool way.
Every year the hair stands up on the back of the neck, as the story reaches it conclusion, with the quiet “Happy Christmas” from Joe the Mess Steward.
Every year we take a moment to recover from a brilliantly crafted story, told so well as to sublimate from solid to gas to indelible pictures in your head.
Perhaps that is the real meaning of Christmas traditions. Shared emotions and experiences that are unique to the people who share them, repeated over time.
“The Shepherd” is our Christmas tradition. Merry Christmas.
RoadDave 