It snowed overnight! We don’t get much of it round here; in fact, it’s been almost exactly a year. So either the perpetrator of this mild act of vandalism is keeping the full twelve days of Christmas, or else someone’s driven in quite a long way without clearing their back windscreen.
Anyway, this time last year we had a pathetic little dusting of snow, and I was in bed, in a good deal of pain and unable to keep any food down, as the leftover gas from my gallbladder removal surgery fought its way around my abdomen. (What sorted it out, for anyone in similar straits, was a little pill called Wind-eze. The packet wasn’t very clear on how it works, but it does.) Today, by contrast, I was able to walk across town in my Wellington boots, stopping at the cathedral to walk the labyrinth (still in wellies – that’s a first!) and eat the last cherry cream choux bun in Caffè Nero. So, contrary to my gloomy posts of the last month, I can and do get better.
Not long after I started taking Advent Sunday as my personal new year, somebody asked me whether I was going to push my end-of-year wrap-ups and preparations forward into November. No, I said, the idea was to take the whole of December (and the first week of January, come to that) to do it at a leisurely pace, and to give me something to do other than getting fruitlessly annoyed by all the commercial-Christmas tat.
Which still holds true. My husband bought me a packet of lebkuchen, which are already in the shops: I love them, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to touch them. Not in November. And yet this year I’ve noticed myself looking forward eagerly to Stir Up Sunday – today – the last Sunday of the Church year, Christ the King in new money – and the making of the pudding. Preparing for the preparation. And I’ve been getting out the recipe books and flicking through things that look tasty, things that look fun, things I’d never normally cook or eat but which might be approached in a spirit of “It’s Christmas”.
I do like a nice recipe book. And I have been reasonably adventurous this year. (Quince, ginger and raisin suet pudding, the other weekend, from Modern Pressure Cooking. Very good.) But I’m not usually this diverted by Christmas food.
It’s partly knowing that I’ll get much less church than in the pre-baby days, and other elements of the festival seem more promising (not that I will have any more opportunity to cook, of course).
It’s partly that this year I know I can eat it without causing myself significant abdominal discomfort. (Last year I had my gallbladder removed on 30 December; from the previous Christmas up until that point, eating anything fatty put me at risk of vomiting and hideous pain.)
It’s partly having stayed, last weekend, at a Premier Inn attached to a Beefeater which was exuberantly and prematurely Christmassy.
It’s partly having led an Advent study day yesterday, based on the O Antiphons (usually encountered 17-23 December), and having been preparing for that for several weeks. (We followed it with Evensong, and used the readings for the Eve of Christ the King. They worked very well.)
It might partly be wanting this year to be over and done with. It’s been intense, and often painful, and it’s gone very fast. So why not wrap it up now?
It might partly be wanting an answer to the question So what do we do about the Christmas pudding, in the absence of our mother, who was always in charge of it?How do we stir it, when none of us is near any of the others?
And this year the answer looked like this: I made the Christmas pudding, out of the recipe book that she always used. Except she always used walnuts where the recipe says almonds, and I didn’t have quite enough walnuts, so I made up the difference with pecans. And I found the last-but-one-apple from our trees. And I sent my brothers a Zoom invitation so that they could observe the stirring.
And now the pudding is steaming away quietly on the hob. It wasn’t remotely the same, of course. But it will do. I might even open the lebkuchen.
We went out to Wicken Fen today; it was about as quiet as you’d expect of a National Trust site on Boxing Day. (That’s not entirely fair: there were plenty of moments where I could hear the birds – and the squeaks of the pushchair wheel and my husband’s shoes.)
The quiet moment came this evening, when the toddler and I went out for a walk around the block to look at the lights. A few of the illuminations have disappeared (ours will be staying up for the full twelve days), and there were more dark windows than usual (people gone away for Christmas, I suppose) but there were still enough to make it worth the trip. There wasn’t anyone else out: just the two of us, the mist, and the lights.
And then, later, this quiet moment between bedtimes. I love coming downstairs when everything’s dark except the tree.
… never simply what you expect, is it? I try to say it was quiet, but there was a congregation of hundreds and the organ was going full strength. It was grey, with a chilly dampness in the air that made it feel colder than the thermometer suggested, but the lights are cheerful. (I always imagine crisp, clear, frosty Christmases, with pale sunlight or sharp-edged stars. But how many of my teenage winters were muffled by sea-mists?) The sparrows were yelling in the ivy. Christmas dinner happened on time but not all of us ate it.
A couple of weekends ago I reminded my Cursillistas that the idea of the “perfect Christmas” is an idol of late capitalism, and that most of my pet peeves (singing the last verse of O come all ye faithful, for example) are red herrings, distractions. It doesn’t do to get too attached to expectations.
Because whatever went wrong today, Christ is born, the Word became flesh, modern technology compensates for being hundreds of miles away from the rest of the family, and Christmas has begun.
… are somewhat malleable. No barszcz tonight, I’m not sure if we have any opłatek, and this fish certainly hasn’t been swimming in our bathtub (not that we’ve ever had a carp swimming in our bathtub). Still, it *is* a fish meal. Traditions from my side: tree decorated while listening to the Nine Lessons and Carols. Nobody made mince pies or iced the cake, though; all that’s going to have to wait until my gallbladder comes out.
I’m not feeling up to the midnight service: disappointed about that (it’s very rare that I get an opportunity to concentrate in church these days) but I will revive Pa’s tradition of Not Going To Midnight Mass (And Reading Gray’s Elegy Instead).
If I were a character in a video game I’d probably be on about three hearts at the moment. Not at death’s door by any means, but having to be a little bit careful. It’s not the time for swishing around with a sword; it’s time to take things easy, recharge a bit.
In human terms, I’m just at the depressing stage of a cold where I’m despairing of ever feeling better again. Of course, this not being my first cold, I know perfectly well that this is itself a symptom and I’ll probably be fine by Christmas. In the meantime, I need to do as little as I can bear to.
Which is a little frustrating, two days before Christmas. It’s not as frustrating as it might have been, because we decided long ago that trying to do trad Christmas with a dodgy gallbladder and a seventeen month old was a mug’s game, so it’s all coming out of boxes this year. But – breaking news! – my gallbladder is coming out this year! So technically I could cook something nice for New Year.
And I do like the idea – but I don’t seem to have the energy or the enthusiasm to do anything more than flip listlessly through Delia Smith’s Happy Christmas. Maybe I’ll recover some motivation between now and then. Maybe I won’t. In the meantime, Lebkuchen come ready made. One of these days I’d like to try making them myself. Not this year, though.
I don’t seem to have taken a photo on 22nd December 2023, but here’s a nacreous cloud from the 23rd. And of course this was a leap year, so I did in fact take this 365 days ago.
It’s particularly pleasing to see interesting sky features around Christmas. I remember one year, staying with the in-laws, getting back from the midnight service as Christmas Eve turned into Christmas morning and looking up to see a shooting star. This year, as noted yesterday, it’s mostly been grey – but we’re not there yet.
I’ve been spending more time (and also more money) in charity shops this year; it comes of spending more time in town. Yesterday I wandered into the Sue Ryder shop (with some assistance from a kind person who held the door for the pushchair) and found these golden apples. They reminded me immediately of a set of four polystyrene, white-leaved, iridescent-glittered apple-shaped Christmas tree decorations from my childhood. The fight over who got to put them on the tree was always vicious: for some reason the obvious solution, do one each, was unacceptable. So I bought these ones in a fit of nostalgia, and because I was already on a bit of a kick buying tree decorations that the toddler and the cat probably couldn’t break. I hope they’ll turn out to be not so much the apples of discord.
But they sparked some other associations, too. Narnia. Jesus Christ the apple tree. The fascination with orchards and walled gardens and fruit trees that’s been a fixture in my head since we first viewed this house, five winters ago, and realised that the bare trees against the garage wall had labels telling us what sort of pears they were. Martin Luther claiming that even if the world were going to end tomorrow, he would still plant his apple tree. (Was Nevil Shute thinking of that when he wrote his gardening couple facing down the apocalypse in On the Beach?)
The best time to plant an apple tree being twenty years ago. Well, our predecessors in this house did that for us. (Yes, apples as well as pears.) The second best time being now. As for the best time to convert an evergreen into an enchanted tree growing golden apples – well, probably Tuesday.
Only one person ever knew what they were getting into, had the choice whether or not to be human, knowing what that inevitably implies, and still did it, for all the rest of us.
I don’t know where this year’s gone. (I mean, I know exactly why it’s gone, but that isn’t quite the same thing.) Which is unusual for me, because I usually make a point of being aware of where I am in time.
These last few days, though, it’s all seemed to settle down, though not on account on anything I’ve done myself. The Morville Year, which I’d bought and immediately lost in the extra safe place in which I’d hidden the present I bought at the same time, turned up (as did the present – too late for the birthday for which it was originally intended, but just in time for Christmas). I loved The Morville Hours and the way it moves gently through the cycle of the year, and have been looking forward to reading this, a collection of related articles.
Slow Time is an old friend, a book that’s encouraged me to explore the calendar and the traditions in which I grew up. And one thing that I have already noticed about organised children’s activities is that they are very keen on seasonal themes, so it ought to get easier from here on in.
One last thing. I was amused to note, firstly that I’d run out of my previous soap bar just in time to start the Christmas Spice one – and secondly, that the one I’ve just finished (and had been using all through Advent) was called Wake Up Call. If you know, you know.
Kathleen Jowitt 