The Holly and the Ivy and the Echinacea

It’s dark and cold and we middle-aged women are run ragged by gift-buying, gift-wrapping, card-sending, and the purchase and preparation of food – while feeling guilty that we are not enjoying Christmas more.

Opportunist viruses patrol, eager to invade. 

As a teacher I can take my pick of virulent illnesses.  They are handed to me on exercise books, they await me on doorhandles.  Sometimes, they are sneezed right in my face.

So my favourite seasonal plant is not the holly, not the ivy, not the Christmas rose nor poinsettia.  It is a plant which blooms not in December, but in summer - echinacea.

It is extract of echinacea which boosts my immune system and wards off the seasonal colds.

Pascoe informs me this is stuff and nonsense.

But I am clinging to my beliefs.

Especially as Christmas is here and I don’t have a cold yet this year.

Obviously it meant that at Evensong at the Cathedral, I was unable to participate fully in “the annual festival of coughing”.

It also means that the impressive stocks of lemsip and cough sweets that I laid down are redundant.

Worst of all, it means I have to find a new excuse for the shortcomings of Christmas dinner.

But, otherwise, it’s a great improvement. 

So next year I shall be sending Christmas cards with an echinacea motif, weaving an echinacea door wreath and decking an echinacea Christmas tree.

Happy Christmas.

Advent – awe and wonder

This is the season of “spend! spend! spend!”, of ear-worm Christmas songs, of glitter and parties.  How can it also be Advent, a time of spiritual preparation, of meditation and fasting?

Personally, I have always suspected the early Christian fathers (NB Fathers, not Mothers) of making a planning error.

In midwinter we desperately need a festival of family and feasting.  In the short, dark days, we crave sparkle.

But the Christian forefathers scheduled our celebration of the birth of Christ in the same time slot as the ancient Roman mid-winter knees-up of Saturnalia, inheriting a tradition of excess.

Perhaps the holy day to contemplate the incarnation of the living God would have been better on a separate occasion.  After all, the few indications we have are that the birth of Christ did not take place in mid-winter – the shepherds would not have been out in the fields with their flocks then.

Each year I strive to provide ideal gifts and a delicious Christmas meal and to reassert our network of kinship and friendship by sending cards.  Each year it knocks my spiritual life sideways, just when it should be peaking.

However, this is the year when I had foot surgery and could not get out and about as I longed to.  So instead, I prepared a little Christmas gift for myself.  In the summer, secretively so as not to seem deranged, I began to make cards and accumulate gifts.

And now, just for once, I can see the stillness of Advent gleaming in the midst of the Christmas glitter storm.

“doing” family

Pascoe left for his PhD in Edinburgh four years ago.  Perran and Carenza moved out to rent together in London ten months ago.
We are having to figure out how we “do” family now, and it is getting complicated. 

We all work, so weekends are the available time slot.  But that is also when the social life happens (the kids’, not ours).  Weekends is also when we travel great distances to see our ageing parents at the farthest extremes of the country.

Plus there are church commitments (ours, not the kids’).

Nigel and I never wanted to be the kind of parents who issue a three-line whip and demand the attendance of our children at frequent events.

But last weekend, it was Nigel’s birthday and we asked Perran and Carenza to spend it with us.  
We did not invite Pascoe.

We had a great time, taking a barge trip from Little Venice to Camden and going to a comedy club there. 

We thought about Pascoe, but decided not to Skype him.

Why didn’t we include Pascoe?

Because some things are even more important that a parent’s birthday.  The deadline for handing in his PhD thesis was roaring towards him like an express train.  We did not want to interrupt.

And then yesterday we got the message that he had met the deadline with several hours to spare.

Hooray!

When at last we all get together for family Christmas, it will make it all the sweeter.

The thesis-writing hat Pascoe's  friends made for him.

Pascoe hands in his thesis BEFORE the deadline.