Traditions

This time of the year above any other, is filled with happy traditions to which we look forward.  Avening WI’s Christmas party is always a fun affair with Shirley’s imaginative games and quizzes, including cheese tasting this year: Could you tell your Edam from your Emmental or your Camembert from your Cambozola? 

The stakes were high!

The morning after, there was the usual shopping to be done with a seasonally inappropriate bag to carry it in, don’t you think?  I’m having a thing about people dressed in seasonally inappropriate clothes right now, but when there’s blossom on a tree and primulas flowering in the garden, who can say what the season is, exactly?

Hardly typical of a December garden, is it?

It was the Stuart Singers’ Christmas concert weekend, so we had our traditional house full.  Perhaps not quite the same as every year, for sadly some friends couldn’t make it.  But two evenings of seasonal music enjoyed by a church full of appreciative supporters made for lively conversation over a glass or two the following day.

There’s a bit of tradition associated with our Sunday lunchtime affair too, which began, as always, with the arrival of our sweet neighbours bearing mistletoe.  Somehow, everyone knows the routine and helped themselves; we needed to do nothing more than enjoy their company and crank up the chocolate fountain.

When everyone had left, the “home team” enjoyed a peaceful couple of hours chatting over hot drinks and sweeties, looking through old December journals and remembering when. 

Sadly, both young government professionals had early starts on Monday morning, so they loaded up their little Nikolaus houses with the roof made of Smarties and the CurlyWurly fences and went off to catch a Sunday evening train back to London.

When he got back from the station, my hero and I kicked off our shoes and normal life resumed in front of the telly.  Another happy tradition 

O Christmas tree

We chose our Christmas tree last week and joked with the salesman about being picky about the shape, the colour, the arrangement of the branches and so on.

It’s been out in the garden all week but it was time to bring it inside and begin the decoration.

I referred to a slight meltdown with the lights last year and suffice to say, we didn’t want a repeat performance this time round.  Both of us had it in our mind that we needed a new set (several new sets) for our tree this year and when I first spotted them on a supermarket shelf back in October, I bought three 240 bulb sets of “white”  lights, thinking they’d do just fine. Yes, we have a big tree!

But yet again, we found ourselves surrounded by wires, transformers, plastic boxes and all manner of different sets of tree lights – including three new boxes bought fresh this year which turned out to be rather bluer in tone than the lights we had already got.  Bleh!  As we did our best to cobble together enough of the “warm white” lights for the tree from our collection (possibly a contender for the European Christmas Tree Light mountain) I thought back to when I was a child, when I remember my parents using a single set of just twelve lamps for our artificial tree.

 

I found this photo on ebay and remembered going into Woolworths to choose a couple of colourful new shapes to have as spares.  My favourite was a snowman.  Over the years we progressed, as did most families I imagine, through 2 sets of 24 multi-coloured fairy lights on a silver tree and on to  a similar number of plain white lights on a green tree again, influenced by time spent in Germany.

Here we are now, with brand new sets of 240 LED multi function lights which will perform all kinds of showy tricks but which we leave on “steady on”.

I suppose arranging lights on a Christmas tree is a mindless enough task to allow such reminiscing and thankfully, we managed to avoid total meltdown as we arranged the three new sets of lights and a fourth we had already which seemed to match.  Quite how there are 900 lights on that tree, I can’t begin to fathom, but I’m not going to count them!  That little set of twelve wouldn’t have gone very far, would it?

A couple of hours later, lights, baubles, ribbons and garlands in place , it’s time to take a photo.  The new lights are working just fine and after a bit of slight rearrangement to deal with a couple of dark spots, we think we’ve got it sorted.

Except

I don’t like the colour of these new lights.  They are cold, hard white and at night time I feel the need to put an extra layer on just to go near it

I’d better put a note in my calendar for September 2016 then, “buy new Christmas tree lights.  Check colour”

First time for everything

I’ve not been to a ballet class before.  Not even as a child, when Saturday mornings for me were spent at the swimming pool rather than in a dance studio.

When my hero and I were invited to attend an open class with one of our small friends though, we didn’t hesitate and this afternoon we spent a fascinating hour in the company of seven young dancers whose poise and grace during the class was remarkable. 

Not only did we learn quite a lot of ballet terms, I was fascinated by the deft manner their mothers had when it came to putting the girls’ hair up in a bun, for bringing up a son meant I never had to acquire such skills.  Anyway, after an hour of pliés, chassés and sautés, our small friend was pretty tired and ready for home.

But true to form, after the class we came back chez nous to create a page for her Christmas book about it. 

Magical days.

Das ist das Haus vom Nikolaus

The Bernina blog posted this entry recently and for a short time, I considered basing our Christmas cards on this idea.  I thought it might be fun to punch the holes in the card, to enclose a piece of thread and challenge our friends to complete the puzzle.  A DIY card, then.  But then I thought how this is one of those things I have to learn all over again every time I do it and it can be frustrating to keep trying (and failing) when you know the answer is so simple.  I decided against the idea, you’ll be glad to learn.

(all 44 solutions on WIkipedia)

Thinking about this on St Nikolaus today, the 6th December (did you clean your shoes last night?) I found many references to the puzzle in German, but hardly anything in English, except for this useful resource (with one simple solution!)  I also came across the mathematical theory which underpins it – I knew nothing about Eulerian paths until now (and still don’t know much!)  I also discovered the next step of the puzzle…und nebenan vom Weihnachtsmann!

You’ll be glad to know that some routines from Nikolaus have been observed today, as well

Eventually

I got my act together and started working on my December Journal!  Well, it is the 5th…

It’s been a funny old week.  Of course, I began it half way through really, since we were in Berlin until Tuesday night and Wednesday disappeared in a mountain of unpacking, washing and general sorting out.  On Thursday, it was my WI Christmas lunch which is usually a jolly affair in a local hotel, but this year we were a little subdued.  The husband of one of our dear friends had died a week or so ago and his memorial service was in the little village church on Thursday morning.  Though she wanted us to carry on with the Christmas lunch as planned it was strange without her and of course, she (and her dear departed husband) were both on everyone’s mind.

Of course, there was shopping to be done and a Christmas tree to choose – even though it won’t be brought inside until next weekend, we know there won’t be any more to choose from later in the week.  So, we decided to go and sort that one out before the weekend rush and were glad we did – first one we saw, we liked  (but of course, we had to look at another couple before we could settle!)

I loved these juniper hearts for the door, but really couldn’t justify spending so much on one, however lovely they are.  I shall hope for calmer weather tomorrow and find a few bits in the garden to make one instead.

And all the week, I was aware that I hadn’t even started my December Journal.  I hadn’t looked at any of my goodies from Berlin and hadn’t really done anything in my studio since the girls came to play a couple of weeks ago.  I knew that the longer I left it, the harder it would be to start.  So today, I decided to do nothing else until I had got it up to date.

First thing was to get the Christmas bits out.  Much easier to complete a page a day if it’s all there at my fingertips, so I pulled a few things from my stash and added them to some new things from this year and settled down to begin.

I knew the colour scheme I’d chosen but decided to leave the covers till later – maybe until the end?  So, right now, it’s not looking especially promising!

But inside is a bit better: a page about advent calendars, one about making my Christmas cards the other day and a few bits and pieces from the Christmas lunch (cracker jokes are usually pretty reliable for that page!)

There’s a photo of choosing the tree and a page about the Christmas cards which are now arriving by every post.

There are still piles of “stuff” on my other worktops though, including a set of numbers for next year’s advent calendar found in Karstadt last weekend, the empty packaging from a box of Advent tea we found: a different tea for every day of the month, individually packaged in a numbered envelope.  I feel sure I can find a use for those (the paper envelopes I mean – of course, we’ll drink the tea!)

Last but not least, the hotel where we had lunch was decorated with paper stars which caught the attention of the ladies around the table, who now want me to show them how they’re made at next week’s WI meeting.  Well, though I’ve made them years ago, I just had to check that I could still remember how…so samples have been prepared and left, half finished on my worktop.

The good thing is, because it’s been such an odd week, I keep thinking today is Sunday.  That means, I get a bonus day tomorrow!  Woohoo!