The Problem of Yule Without Yin.

I took the extraordinary step of acknowledging Christmas today. I called up YouTube and ordered three minutes of The Holly and the Ivy sung by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. I did say that carols should be sung by a choir, didn’t I? I did. And so they should.

It was pleasant enough watching a bunch of immaculately scrubbed young people in their cassocks and surplices singing a song with pagan roots so precisely and earnestly, and it did briefly remind me of my childhood in the church choir and the magic I used to sense around the Christmas season. But there was something missing: they were all male. Boys and men all, with not a maiden, mother or crone in sight.

Now, whatever the traditionalists and musicologists might say, I have to say that a boy soprano is no substitute for a woman, and that a choir without women is unbalanced. The universal energy is lopsided, you see, because the yin is missing.