I have never been a great lover of parties. I know, that makes me sound like a bit of a misery and I put it down to the fact that I have never really enjoyed surprises, I like to know what to expect and even now have a dread of the unexpected. One of the big event in the Church calendar each year was the Watchnight Social, followed bay a short communion service, welcoming in the New Year. The festivities would begin at around 7:30pm on New Years eve and there would be a four hour period of fun and laughter as we danced favourites like The Gay Gordons, The dashing white sergeant, waltzes, foxtrots and the like, none of which I really understood and I have never been a dancer. I was much happier delivering speeches at my own and my daughters weddings than stepping on the dance floor and doing my worst. To make matters worse, the typical church tends to have far more unattached women than men, so a young teenage lad would be dragged up onto the dance floor and expected to touch a woman!
The dancing was punctuated by silly games like pass the parcel, which under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have objected to, however, to spice things up a bit forfeits would be inserted into some layers and the last thing I wanted to do was end taking off a layer and risking having to do something that would embarrass me. On of the favourite games for an evening like this was “bring me” when we were split into teams and the leader would sit in the middle and ask for certain things that hopefully somebody in the group would have about their person. I learned on those evenings the complete mystery of some items contained in Ladies handbags. I used to loathe the game where we sat in a circle and had to move up and down the chairs in response to questions about our person, if somebody was occupying the chair we were aiming for, then we had to sit on the occupant’s knee. I was always a big lad and everybody thought it hilarious if I was expected to sit on the knee of some fragile looking elderly lady.
The highlight of the evening for me was when we broke with the festivities and had our food. We always used to have a faith supper, the idea being that we each brought our own plate of food and ate somebody else’s. One memorable evening was when one of the men in Church who lived alone brought a tin of baked beans and a couple of slices of bread and two lucky people that night sat down to a plate of beans on toast while the rest of us ate our fairly predictable sandwiches. The faith supper was replaced in time with the “bring and share” supper. I remember having one such supper when, many years after the watch night social had stopped, about eight couples met on New Years Eve and each couple had brought a plate of sausage rolls, I guess that our faith diminished after that night and bring and share suppers today tend to be far more organised as we all agree what we will contribute in advance.
Looking back, I owe a lot to those watch night socials. I was always quite a shy child and hated the thought of making a fool of myself, looking back, even now, I can feel my anxiety levels increasing. Maybe the most important lesson I learned was how to step outside my comfort zone and as I look back over in excess of sixty years of life, I have achieved a whole host of successes doing things I would never have felt to be possible. I still hate dancing and dread having to sit on the knee of a small, elderly woman in some silly game, but I thank God that throughout my life I haven’t simply stuck in the place where I feel most at ease, but have stepped out and taken risks.