Jeremy's Blog 21st December 2022: Christmas Light for the Future
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 21st December 2022
Christmas is a fixed point each year in the calendar of turbulent centuries, important for the faith of many and, with older roots close to the darkest day of the winter solstice, long-embedded in the customs of our people, as it is in the customs of others. That continuity over the ages brings comfort in a time of uncertainty as the world, juddering with shocks, enters a new age of risk. The power of Christmas comes with its entwined affirming strands of light, hope, resilience and celebration, giving an anchor for the coming year secured on past ages.
Christmas is the point when we use light to defy the dark, whether lights are put up at the start of December or not until Christmas Eve, are Christmas candles or in shopping streets. It offers social celebration, probably long before Alfred commended the Anglo-Saxon Middewintermas as a holiday. It also touches more widely as hope and celebration come with wistful undertones of the times, places and people slightly beyond reach, “where I went and cannot go again”, when the veils of time are thinnest.
This is all the more important in difficult times, whether of war or hardship, when it can affirm resilience in the face of all adversity, again shining out against the dark. We had our wartime blackout Christmas of 1941 with food rationing and a ban on wrapping paper, when an ox heart might be the Christmas meal; still showing resilience and hope that the light would prevail. Despite all, Kyiv officials have turned on the lights of a Christmas tree, another is in an underground station and bomb shelter in Kharkhiv. A Kyiv station has Christmas lights powered by a bicycle and Mykolaiv its Christmas Tree of Invincibility. A millennium ago, English refugees from defeat at Hastings found new homes in Crimea; now Ukrainian families are invited to switch on British towns’ Christmas lights.
Pandemic, energy shocks and war follow financial crisis in reshaping the world as we learn again about risk, reinforced by the return of interest rates. Yet here, we had the seamless succession from the late Queen Elizabeth II to Charles III and governments have been changed when they failed. Nonetheless, we have much to do in rising to make our future secure in a more volatile world.
Having lit our lights, we can take heart and responsibility for the coming year. We have farms and firms to run, land to manage, taking our actions to shape businesses, the countryside and the environment for the future, adapting and building as best we can. To do this, we must be open to the changes required for the prosperity we will need, more open to risk where there is reward, clinging less to the past comforts that obstruct this.
Having held the examinations through the pandemic and with this year’s successes in all four parts of the United Kingdom, the CAAV will continue briefing and representing members in their professional service to the rural sector. We have been happy to play our part on a larger stage, working on TEGoVA’s response to Ukraine’s requests for guidance on valuation standards when assessing war damage reparations and reconstruction costs.
Throughout, we affirm the importance of professionalism and responding to challenge, focusing on what matters and can be controlled. Clients facing the coming changes in markets, policies, climate, technologies and other factors will, more than ever, need good, dispassionate, rounded advice – the agricultural valuer’s strength to help light prevail.
With all best wishes for Christmas and the year to come.