On Advent Sunday...

Hello, thank you for dropping in.  If you dropped in yesterday expecting to find a new post I am very sorry - my good intentions failed on only the 3rd December.  Sigh.  My excuse is that we went to see The Mathematician, who won't be home from university until a few days before Christmas and who is feeling the academic pressure.  We got home later than we intended after a lovely day with her and although there was still time for me to fulfil another part of my Advent plan, there wasn't enough time to write about it here. 

Yesterday was Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas.  I have sought some clerical clarification about when Advent begins in the Anglican church and received the answer that...it's debatable!  Apparently, if we are observing Advent personally in our homes it begins the day after the Feast of Christ the King, so that's six days before Advent Sunday. However, it doesn't begin in terms of church worship until Advent Sunday.  If the clergy can't work out a definitive answer, I don't think there's any hope for the rest of us!  

So, now we are all definitely in the season of Advent, which I love for its quietness, its candles, its preparations, its treats and the bubble of excitement which I can feel starting to surface.  Advent is a waiting time but not one of those when a sense of dread hangs over you, rather a time when we are looking forward to all the lovely things which will happen at its end.  I like to make a little step along the journey every day.  Over the weekend I cleared a shelf on the bookcase and put up my crib. -

Sorry this pic is overexposed.  I took it on my 'phone and I just couldn't get the lighting right: too dark with no flash and overexposed with flash.

We didn't have a crib at home when I was a child but I was always a bit obsessed with other people's and when an elderly friend asked me if she could give me hers more than twenty years ago, I was thrilled.  She wanted to pass it on to a good home because her son had bought her a new one from the Holy Land and as The Teacher was only six years old, my friend thought that she would like it.  She did and although it's not grand in any way and the figures are only plastic, it has woven its way into the fabric of our Christmas celebrations.  For some inexplicable reason, we couldn't find it last year and I felt a bit out of sorts without its comforting presence but a few weeks, ago, the Best Beloved bore it up from the cellar triumphantly, which really was odd because we have always kept it in the loft.  So here is the stable, humble and a bit shabby, which is entirely fitting if you think about it.  Mary, Joseph and the donkey haven't arrived yet because they are still travelling and so obviously, the shepherds and wise men haven't yet received any Good News, so they haven't arrived either.  There is just a solitary cow in the stable, waiting.  I hope she is as excited as I am.

See you tomorrow, hopefully.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x