Christmas Eve:
Morning: last minute dashing around (this year, looking for wool for my mother, who was playing yarn chicken with my brother’s fiancée’s Christmas present); making mince pies if I can be bothered
2.55pm: the radio is switched on for
3.00pm: the Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge (not last year; we were there in person)
during which –
- the tree is decorated
- the cake is iced
4.45pm: change for choir
5.30pm: leave for choir
5.45pm: brief warm-up before:
6.30pm: Nine Lessons and Carols at our parish church
8.00pm: dash home
Through the rest of the evening:
the several courses of the Polish Wigilia meal, beginning with sharing opłatek (pictured) with a hug and a kiss, and finishing with cherry vodka in tiny green and gilt glasses,
and, if we’re done before
11.15pm: dash out to the midnight service
12.30am: come home, put the bike away as quietly as possible given the fact that the padlock on the shed has frozen up, and go to bed
Two families’ worth of traditions, together with our shared tradition of singing (and therefore telling us what the Director of Music tells us). It’s like this every year, and next year it will be different again.
Kathleen Jowitt 