America has no history – or at least a very short one. It lacks the feudal panoply that we can bring to any ceremonial event. With horses, breast-plates, gilded carriages and landaus it is almost as though we do not need our silver bands to make an occasion memorable. The trumpeters, the drum-majors are there already, practised and waiting for the word of command.
It is of course necessary to learn another language to make the ceremonial all it should be Feudal England was a self-contained entity. Its horses, its tabards, its retinues, its flunkeys belong to another age. That age was one of deference, Everybody knew his place and that is a great convenience in ceremonial.
Ceremonial preserved as is the English form of it can get out of hand. it can be expensive. It can give false impressions of rank, splendour, power. But it allows the organisers of ceremonial to make their arrangements on the basis of past pageantry. They do not have to start inventing afresh each time.
When we see law-court scenes in the USA and compare them with our own, we may have some qualms. Workaday wigs and periwigs are all very well and an English court is arranged to suggest that justice is more than this world can muster but a USA court is likely to have that expressed in a form of words that is more intelligible than the significance of our robes and formalities.
If dress and procedures have an impact in law and constitutional happenings, it is likely that the same impact is achieved by vesture and ritual in churches. (The British way of worship is not the only way but it there is simple as well as complex ritual.) That is not a bad way to go about things. Everybody agrees on one thing. Vicars should not wear trainers in church.
COMMUNITY COMPOST
Toxteth Park parish church, Liverpool does alLthe things churches do but it does one thing no other church does – at least, to my knowledge. It runs a community compost heap. The Vicar is Keith Hitchman.
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