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The Christmas
Lace Notes

4/12/2023 0 Comments

You can't tell me when it's Christmas

There are two types of people who have their birthday in December:
  • People like my father who hated that Christmas was overshadowing his birthday on 5th December
  • People like my Mum's stepfather who loved that all the Christmas goodies were in the shops, just in time for his birthday on 6th December.
Uncle Reg, Mum's stepfather, loved pecan nuts.  In a world where things were still seasonal, they would appear in the shops around the 1st of December.  My Grandmother (Mum's mum) would always make sure she came home a little early on the first friday of the month so she could stop off at the greengrocers and buy him a big brown paper bag full.
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The rose gold tinge of their shell is so linked to December, in my mind.
Even with my birthday being in October, and many of the Christmas gifts being in the shops in September I didn't mind.  There was more chance I'd get an exciting birthday present because of it. 

In those heady days of the 70s, as a child, Halloweven wasn't really an event in South London.  So, it would be Christmas presents on sale September / October, then fireworks late October to 5th November and suddenly all the shops had Christmas decorations.  If you had an artificial tree (normally silver tinsel!) you could put it up in early December, but for those of us who had a real tree, then it would be week before Christmas.
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Christmas preparations would start in earnest on the last Sunday of November, for those who would make their own sugary delights.  Stir up Sunday is traditionally the day that families would make their Christmas Puddings and often their Christmas cake.

The reason for doing it so early was preservation and economy of time.  In the run up to Christmas, pre microwaves, finding time to steam a pudding for 8 hours, in order to cook it, would be difficult.  But if everyone was doing it on the same day, you wouldn't be expected to have visitors.
Fruit cakes are edible on the day that they are baked but it is one of those wonderful and magical chemical reaction things that a fruit cake is better if it's left to mature.  To help with that, we would feed it with a begrudingly given amount of whisky from my father's drinks cabinet.

I still make a Dundee Cake each year, using Mary Berry's receipe, only mine are cooked in mini cake tins that give two bites so you can snaffle one and not feel guilty.

In our house it's served straight and not with cheese which my Australian husband was shocked to discover his relatives in Yorkshire do.  He was also shocked by how much whisky was in the cake they served him and had to not drive for 6 hours after the cake!
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Even if you want to ban Christmas until after your December birthday then you are going to have problem with Advent Calendars.  Due to their nature, they have to start on 1st December.

This year, I had bought Hubby a chocolate one, as usual, but when doing my shopping order on Thursday, I saw the Woodmansterne Caltime Nativity Scene.  It was reduced because, well it was the 30th November.  So I treated myself.

Each day I get to take a few minutes out of my life and build a bit of the scene and I'm using it as a way to think and reflect in the lead up to Christmas this year.
For those, who, like my father gate keep when Christmas can start (normally after their birthdays), it smacks of those Bridezillas who won’t let others do anything during their wedding year.  

We each need to choose when our own Christmases start for us.
Just beind me, whilst I sit at my desk, is my candle advent calendar. 

This is a treat to have a small candle burn during my days when I'm in my home office, or light when I'm in bed, reading.

Again, it's an opportunity to take a few minutes out of my day to stop and reflect.

Someone once said to me that I was a hypocrite because I went to church or synagogue but I wasn't perfect.  I didn't respond because there was no point. 

They weren't going to understand that I follow my faith because I am NOT perfect. 

But I always strive to be a little better each day.
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2/12/2023 0 Comments

Advent Traditions

Yesterday I looked at what Advent means, building on my blog from last year about what makes Advent Calendars so special.

​Today, I want to explore some Advent Traditions.
For those of us, in the UK, growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the Blue Peter Advent Crown was an annual make that we wanted to do.

Obsessed with acquiring coat hangers and tinsel, we had no idea where we would be hanging it, if we got to make it.

I'm not even sure when fire-retardant tinsel came into being, so it had the added excitement of whether or not you would burn your house down before Christmas.
The Advent Crown was a take on the Advent wreath.  As with many traditions that we are familiar with, here in the UK, they became popular through Prince Albert's influence.  But with our tradition of Yule, it didn't take too much to pursuade us to bring evergreen greenary into the house.
Sweden and Julklapp
Whilst Julklapp's literal translation is Christmas Present the practice is sometimes translated as Christmas knocking and is more akin to modern Secret Santa.

Dating back to the mid 1700s, the idea was to write a message or rhyme, attach it to your present, knock on your neighbour's door or maybe opening the door and throwing the present in before you run away and hide.

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The Rules of the Game Today (taken from the elfster blog)
While there are many various, the most standard version is relatively simple.
  1. Write each person’s name on separate sheets of paper. This ensures that everyone is included. It also randomizes who gives to whom.
  2. Ask each person to write down 1-2 gift suggestions. This is the fun part. People can write down serious or useful gifts, gag gifts, or something totally random. They can also write down something they want, especially if you are playing the White Elephant variation. This step is also a good time to establish a price range for the gifts.
  3. Put the names in a bowl, hat, or similar object so that they can’t be seen. Then, have each participant draw a name. This is where things get more interesting, because participants may not know exactly what their recipients want. You can also have each person randomly choose one of the gift ideas the participants wrote down in step 2.
  4. The host should create a secret master list of who is giving to whom. This ensures that, if a name is lost or forgotten, the recipient still gets a gift. It also prevents mistakes or any form of cheating.
  5. Plan a time for the gift exchange, or arrange a day when the presents will be delivered. If this is an office event or a family get-together, you can make this a Christmas party. You could also go with something like Julklapp, where the giver sneaks the package to the recipient’s home or mails it anonymously.
  6. If you go with the party option, people can try to guess who their Santas were. This part of the exchange is especially helpful in building camaraderie among fellow employees or strengthening the bonds of friends or family. It is up to you whether to reveal the givers or not. In this way the game could end at the exchange party or go on for years.
Carol Services
We all have memories of school carol services.  Kids with dripping noses singing with only a rough connection to the tune and variations of words such as most highly flavoured gravy instead of Most Highly Favoured Lady.

Probably the most famous Carol Service comes from Kings College, Cambridge.

Correctly called A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, this service was introduced in 1918 and first broadcast in 1928.
The College's website says that it was introduced to 'bring a more imaginative approach to worship', but I can't help thinking that just 6 weeks after then end of World War I this must have been a very moving way to start Christmas.

Each year, the service is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as well as the World Service and now appears on iPlayer shortly after the service has concluded.
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Back in 1990, Delia Smith published her Christmas book which was accompanied by a TV series.

Apart from bring us her famous more booze that fruit Creole Christmas cake, she vocalised what many of us thought when she said that for her, Christmas started, in her kitchen, on Christmas Eve, preparing things whilst listening to the service from Kings College.

Christmas Devotions
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There are probably two periods in the Christian calendar when we are very focused on how fragile our lives are and how much we don't deserve God's love and kindness.

Easter, with it's period of contemplation between Ash Wednesday, Good Friday then culminating in Easter Sunday has always been a time when I've attended a sewing retreat and focused on my unworthiness.

Christmas is a more hopeful time.  It's full of promise.  Advent is about what is to come and with that, all the expectations.
Whether or not you are a Christian, there is a sense of light in the darkness, starting with Diwali, which falls at the end of October / start of November, then Hanuakkah, during December, the Winter Solstice, on 21st December, and finally Christmas, there is a sense of hope, of light in the darkness and salvation.

Whether it's good over evil (Diwali), deliverance from peril (Hanuakkah), the days getting longer (Solstice) or the promise of salvation (Christmas).
Many Christains will undertake weekly advent bible studies in the run up to Christmas.  One of the most memorable ones I've attended was based on the lines of a well know Christmas Carol.

Others will read a commentary or special daily devotion that allows them to reflect on this period of anticipation.

Whether you are a member of a church, occasionally attendee or someone who keeps their faith in their heart, it offers an opportunity to remind yourself of why you believe and, whatever your faith, that we all strive to be the best we can in this world.
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1/12/2023 0 Comments

Why Advent?

Advent marks the weeks before Christmas and is a time of anticipation, preparation and reflection leading up to Christmas Day.

Advent starts with the aptly named Advent Sunday.  This is the 4th Sunday before Christmas Day and usually falls between 27th November and 3rd December.  This year, 2023, it is 3rd December.
Churches and homes would have an Advent Wreath or Crown with a candle being lit on each Sunday.  Although the practice is traditionally a Lutheran practice, it has spread from it's origins in Germany to many other Christian denominations and countries.

Normally there are four candles, for the four Advent Sundays, often coloured and a fifth, white candle to be lit on Christmas Day.

Whilst the practice can be dated to the 16th Century, it wasn't until the mid 19th Century that the practice became more wide spread due to the the work of Johann Hinrich Wiehern.  During Advent, the children at the mission school, that he founded, would ask daily if it was Christmas yet.  
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So, in 1839 he took a cartwheel and added candles to it.  Each week day a small candle was lit and on Sundays a larger candle.  Counting down the days to Christmas.

By the 1920s the custom had been adopted by other Christian denominations in Germany and soon spread, in the 1930s to North America.
Behind the wreath, there is symbology and meaning.
  • Circular wreath - God's infinite love
  • Evergreen leaves - eternal life
  • Candles - the light of God
But even these have evolved over the years with each of the candles being give a specific meaning that can be meditated on when lit.
  1. Week 1 - hope / Messiah or prophecy candle
  2. Week 2 - love / Bethlehem candle
  3. Week 3 - joy / Shepard Candle
  4. Week 4 - peace / Angle Candle
The final, and fifth candle (often white) is lit on Christmas Eve and is often called the 'Christ Candle'.  It's often lit again on Christmas Day and throughout the days following.  In some traditions, it's also lit during Ephiphaytide.

​The advent wreath concept, of counting down to Christmas, has also spawned other Advent practices that we are familiar with.

Where a full wreath isn't possible, then a single candle marked with the days is often chosen.
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I love these crocheted socks by my friend, Nicola Hunt
And who cannot forget Advent Calendars which I explored last year in my lace notes.

These days they have evolved into chocolate filled wonders or individual bags of lovely things.
We might order an Advent package of mini skeins to open each day or start a Make Along where we receive a few rows of a pattern to make each day.  Ravelry and pattern designers' blogs are full of offers to sign up during October and November with the first parts released on 1st December.
For the makers amongst us, Advent calendars offer an opportunity to create small gifts or the containers for such things.
I've explored some of the advent traditions in my next blog
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25/12/2022 0 Comments

Christ is Born in Bethlehem

Once again, Desborough & Toller URCs published an advent booklet with a reading for each day, written by a member of the congregation.

This year, each day took its inspiration from a line of the carol 'Once in Royal David's City'.

Here is one of the two that I wrote.
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I was just 18 when I took that school trip. 
 
We had travelled over 4 hours, by coach, to a remote kibbutz before heading to Bethlehem, which at that time was still within Israel.  The land was undulating, and in the distance, the hills has a smattering of snow.  As we drove through the countryside, we saw burnt out tanks, relics of the 6 days war.  With the dry, arid environment, they looked as fresh as the day they had been hit, over 17 years earlier.
 
The coach was filled with young teenagers who were boisterous; laughing and chatting whilst at the back, I and my friend were feeling bleak from the landscape we had driven through.
 
The Church of the Nativity, as we arrived, was a plain solemn looking building. Set in a courtyard, we stayed back from the loud tourist hoards and walked in silence towards the entrance.

Nothing could have prepared me for the inside.  The far end of the church, directly in front of us, was ornate and gilded.  The smell of incense was overwhelming. This seemed a world away from the Bethlehem of the Bible.
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We waited until everyone else from the group had finished and then went through a doorway.  Carefully, we wound our way down the steps to the Grotto of the Nativity.  It was the four of us.  Myself, my friend, my teacher and a guide from the Church.
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The grotto was so quiet after the noise of the coach and church.  The guide pulled us towards the altar and showed us, underneath the fourteen-point silver star, marking where Jesus was born. 
 
He looked around, conspiratorially, and beckoned us over, indicating for us to touch it.  We three leaned in and placed our hands there, together.  As we did this, I looked up at the cave we were in, below the church that was bustling, and in that quiet, sacred space, I connected with something bigger than myself.

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20/12/2022 0 Comments

Nothing says Christmas like a German Market

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My first visit to a Christmas Market, in Germany, was in 2006 when I was in Munich for work.  

​Between 2012 and 2016 I visited Munich for work every December and spent most of my evenings wandering around Marienplatz and taking in the Christmas vibe whilst keeping myself warm drinking Glühwein.

​One year, I was so cold that it took me nearly an hour to defrost back in my hotel room.

In 2007, hubby and I went to Cologne and visited the 8 markets there.
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Cologne
German Christmas markets, also known as "Weihnachtsmarkt," have a long history dating back to the Middle Ages. These markets originated in the German-speaking regions of Europe and have since spread to other parts of the world.

The first recorded Christmas market was held in Dresden, Germany in 1434. These early markets were held in church squares and were a way for people to buy and sell goods, particularly food and handmade crafts, during the holiday season.

Over time, the Christmas market tradition spread throughout Germany and other parts of Europe, becoming an important part of the region's cultural and economic life. Today, German Christmas markets are known for their festive atmosphere, which includes the sale of traditional holiday foods, drinks, and gifts, as well as live music and other entertainment.
Every one of our nutcrackers and incense burners, that we get out at Christmas, have been bought at one of the Christmas Markets we have visited in either Germany or the UK
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In the UK, Christmas Markets have started to become a regular feature with a Medieval one in Lincoln and the now famous Frankfurt German Market in Birmingham.
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Lincoln
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Birmingham
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