Shropshire Magazine

Christmas lights in Shifnal, 2007. Picture: Mike Hayward.

May I take this opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas? Of course, if you are reading this on the day of this issue’s publication, then it’s still November and I’m nearly a month premature.

It may well be that, having many more pressing matters, you haven’t got around to casting your eye over these random thoughts until the day after Boxing Day when, all other attractions having been exhausted and excess-fuelled lethargy having set in, you resort to thumbing through The Shropshire Magazine. In which case, Happy New Year.

If, on the other hand, your festive season is so full of invitations, commitments and merriments that you simply can’t contemplate the indulgence of reading anything more complicated than a menu until New Year, may I, while wishing you prosperity for 2009 and joy of this December magazine, direct your attention to our bumper January issue.

Should your eyes only be lighting on this for the first time in a dentist’s waiting room next March then . . . happy Easter.

I guess seasonal issues are a little about timing, although the one thing you can guarantee about Christmas is that there’ll always be another one along. Still, whenever you browse these online pages, or flick through the pages of our print issue, I’m hopeful you’ll find something that resonates in the here and now – which, when you think of it, is the only time there ever is.

A case in point is our lead article, exclusively written for you by star actress Fiona Fullerton, which makes good reading anytime, anywhere. When you consider Fiona’s CV, this is a bit of a coup for The Shropshire Magazine.

She assured herself of movie immortality in 1985 when she starred as a Bond Girl opposite Roger Moore in 007 blockbuster A View To A Kill. In all, she enjoyed a 30-year career on stage and screen, playing opposite some of the industry’s biggest names, before retiring to become a successful property developer and national journalist. I had the pleasure of meeting her earlier this year when she talked about her affection for Ludlow and the deal was struck for her to write an exclusive piece for us about how she came to fall in love with the town. It’s well worth laying hands on a print copy of the magazine.

Sure enough, we’ve plenty about the festive season and Shropshire people who help make it the joy it is. In print, we feature a couple of top Christmas tree growers and a man who’s played Santa Claus for nearly 50 years, and we have suggestions on putting together the perfect yuletide feast with the best of county produce.

We also reveal the connection between Hope House’s popular Santa Run and The Queen, Prince Charles and several other top royals.

And there’s the chance to win bottles of Tanners bubbly with a jumbo Christmas crossword and quizzes with a local flavour.

Of course, we all have to work out the real meaning of Christmas for ourselves. It means different things to different people. Charles Dickens might have written his Christmas stories 165 years ago but, in these recessionary times, they still strike a chord.

Many, for instance, might empathise with Ebenezer Scrooge when he says: “What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older but not an hour richer; and time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead gainst you?” He then dismisses the season as “humbug”.

However, I like to think that Scrooge’s nephew Fred Holywell speaks for most of us when he replies: “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say. Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

“And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Neil Thomas, Editor

• Email Neil here.