Annie Lennox from The Eurythmics has been describing how she feels about Christmas and the crucifiction.
The singer is relaunching her A Christmas Cornucopia album from ten years ago, causing her to think about attending church as a kid and what she thinks of it now.
“Christmas is a really strange thing because originally it’s supposed to be the acknowledgment of the birth of Christianity.
“And I’m not a Christian, and I’m not religious but I have a sensibility for transcendent things.”
Whilst not fully convinced by its truth, Lennox is fascinated with the ritual and belief behind Christmas.
As a child, she eagerly anticipated her school Christmas service, where the kids would trail in “great crocodile lines” to church to sing carols and gasp at the towering tree.
“I’m a sponge for music,” she says.
“I hear things and it lasts with me. I love melody and I didn’t fully understand baby Jesus and any of that.
“You know there’s a baby Jesus that’s in a crib with shepherds and kings and angels and then there’s the crucified Jesus, with blood and thorns and the torture and the cruelty of it.
“That’s really scary…and maybe that is a symbol for the life we enter into.
“We’re born into innocence and then we suffer and die, so maybe at a symbolic level that is what Christianity is about – rebirth and death and all of that.”
A Christmas Cornucopia features interpretations of traditional festive songs and carols.
“With the Christmas Cornucopia, there’s a leaning into the pagan, there’s a pagan side to it, a pre-Victorian calling in some kind of more ancient thing, something to do with nature.
“That goes beyond the Christianity and Victorian concept, where these carols have come from.
“These carols come from the mid-19th century, and so they’re a marker of time, they’re a marker of our history, they’re a marker of people’s experience.”
Lennox and Dave Stewart – together The Eurythmics – have staged a handful of one-off reunions for charitable causes, including last year at Sting’s Rainforest Foundation Fund benefit concert.
Yet a full-blown reunion is off the cards, she explains.
“We live very different lives. He doesn’t live near me. But we’re on good terms.
“We just live different lives and that’s always the point – whenever me and Dave get together we become a unit that’s called Eurythmics.
“Wherever we are we become one kind of unit, that’s how people perceive it and it was very necessary for me and that time, for him too, to individuate…
“I came to the point where I was like ‘I need to know who I am’ not this thing with the two of us.
“I need to know how I can make the decisions for myself and do my own thing."
Lennox’s last full album of original material came in 2007 with Songs Of Mass Destruction.
Since then there have been covers and a collection of instrumental piano pieces.
Lennox said she is waiting until inspiration strikes before recording her next original album.
