Our Christmas card to you comes from the twilight days of winter. How glad we were this year, to celebrate the Winter Solstice and know that slowly, slowly, the days will again become longer.
The very act of finding the perfect Christmas tree and bringing it into the house, that gives every corner the delicious pine scent of the forest is so full comforting nostalgia. Yet our Christmas tree each inexorably holds our hope too, all bound up in our annual ritual. Each day now our candles flicker in the twilight and the fairy lights glow in the gloom of winter, just as they have over the centuries to chase the dark days of winter away.
Christmas trees and pine cones
Some years I have confidently divided my Christmas blog into neat observations about the fabric of Christmas. This year it feels more about keeping happy and safe in these difficult times with random musings.
It’s a time for enjoying our home with a delightful jumble of Christmas cards spilling over surfaces. Christmas feels such a perfect time for tracking down old treasures from the depths of cupboards and lofts and stepping back from life for a few days.
Our Christmas cards have been written and our newsletter has been sent.
The old treasures of Christmas time
Charles iced two cakes this year and decorated them with my mothers 50’s and 60’s ornaments, so carefully stored in a vintage tin. In later years she opted for a snow scene (rather like aertex plaster!) but she still carefully placed the treasured ornaments!
How I remember clinging to the edge of the kitchen table as a child as the icing was made, the colorant for the piping chosen and a massive syringe type thing was assembled to decorate the cake. And there would always be the practise swirls on a cake to consume later. Ahh! Those little pink mountains of sweetness, gently setting on the outside yet still soft and yielding within set to one side on a plate.
Months beforehand there had been the stirring of the Christmas pudding and cake, the wooden spoons to lick. And finally those left over little balls of marzipan – I haunted the kitchen for weeks!
A winter day just before Christmas at Ednovean
So how are your Christmas preparations going? Spud is ready of course – he came in from his morning constitutional today like a mini rain cloud, before he gently shaking raindrops over my toes.
Our little fox was still curled up tight in his cosy bed of hay in the barn on these mornings, hidden behind the horses rug rack. With the warmth of the munching horses warming the barn and our Christmas tree is filling the house with the scent of Christmas, we’d like to wish you a very Happy Christmas……… and Spud slumbers on, on the end of our bed.
Stay safe and warm and be oh so careful if you have to go out today x
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