Our project is called, ‘The Vindication of Christmas‘ because of a pamphlet written by the King’s Water Poet, John Taylor in 1652. As part of our Heritage project, we created a film about how Thames Waterman Taylor tried to save Christmas. We promised to share the completed film with retired Waterman and Lighterman at their Christmas dinner at Waterman’s Hall in the City of London on Friday 9th December 2022.
Taylor was an ordinary working man, a Thames Waterman like my own grandfather, John Daniel. Taylor helped create our idea of Father Christmas by personifying the spirit of Christmas to defend the festive season from the attack it was under by the Puritans during the English Civil War.
Thanks to my history teachers at Wilmington Grammar School for Girls (WGSG), Mr Lennon and Mr Atkins we were able to recruit girls from WGSG to work with CRAY to create a film to highlight how John Taylor battled to overcome the cancellation of Christmas during the English Civil War. The Cray members who attended Waterman’s Hall were:
Ruby Daniel Y11 Wilmington Grammar School for Girls Lotte Daniel Y9 Wilmington Grammar School for Girls Jessica Springham Y9 Wilmington Grammar School for Girls Ella-Marie Dawson-Asaam Y11 Wilmington Grammar School for Girls Gabriel Dawson-Assam Y8 Wilmington Grammar School for Boys Rachel Poku Y10 Wilmington Grammar School for Girls Rakhmat Mustapha Y10 Wilmington Grammar School for Girls
For all of us, the cancellation of Christmas in 1647 reminded us of the enforced cancellations of Christmas in 2020/21 due to Covid 19. As Christmas 2022 is the 375th anniversary of the Plum Pudding Riots that followed Parliament’s clamp down on Christmas in 1647, we arranged to present our film to retired watermen and lightermen at Waterman’s Hall where John Taylor’s portrait hangs.
The film we were aiming to present was a result of working with animator Zoom Rockman in July 2022 at Bexley Local Studies and Archives. CRAY created a short 3-minute animation about John Taylor’s defence of Christmas. Each of us worked with cartoonist/puppeteer Zoom Rockman to design the characters that would appear in the film.We ended up creating a short animation that highlighted the incredible coincidence that Parliament banned Christmas on the same date, 19th December, as Boris Johnson did to announce the lockdown in 2020. You can watch the film on this article.
Waterman’s Hall asked if we could present our film after their Christmas dinner had finished at 4 pm. To do this we had to get permission from our headteacher Ms Lawson to leave school at lunchtime so that we could arrive in good time to prepare to present our film. Waterman’s Hall offered us the opportunity to travel to our presentation by Thames Clipper for free. This allowed us to arrive in style! We were all very grateful to Eddie Smith of the Retired Lighterman’s Committee for organising this for us.
The young people from CRAY worked together to provide an introduction to our film for the pensioners who attended. We told them how John Taylor had been a Thames Waterman just like them before he went on to become the King’s Water Poet. John Taylor’s portrait watched over us as we gave our presentation. I hope he liked our film. We all thought his portrait looked like Father Christmas, the very man Taylor employed to save the festive season from the Puritans.
After our presentation, my grandad, John Daniel, showed us the room where he went before the Master of Waterman’s Hall in 1953, at the start of his apprenticeship. I was very proud to present our project in the place where he gained his freedom the River Thames. It was the perfect end to a lovely day. I have created this short vlog to give you an idea of how special it was. I even used verse to tell the story in honour of John Taylor, the King’s Water poet!
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