Christmas is coming...

...and we have a Christmas tree! This is the first Christmas tree we've had since we got married (you may all say "awww" now) so we really splashed out and bought the decorations from Walmart. Seriously though, it is a responsibility. I'm pretty sure many of my parents' Christmas decorations date from the early days of their marriage; it was a humbling feeling to be sizing up baubles with the knowledge that we might well be digging those very same baubles out of their dusty box in the attic in 30 years time. Nothing does longevity like a Christmas ornament.

In which case, of course, we also need some dusty photos to dig out along with the decorations, to show the very first time they were used. Thus we have Graham decorating the tree, and Martha decorating the mantelpiece. The ones of Graham with baubles dangling from his ears and Martha wrapped in tinsel will not be appearing on this blog. Some things should not be shown to future generations (or present ones for that matter).

I hope you agree that the finished product is pretty sweet.

It's a little early to say Merry Christmas, but today is the first Sunday in Advent. So a blessed Advent to you all.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Well that antler on the mantlepiece has already seen a few years since it left the Isle of Mull! May all your Christmases be well-decorated.

love Dad

1 December 2009 at 17:23

A Place at the Table: Spiritual Formation Book 12

"God has ordained in his great wisdom and goodness that eating, and especially eating in company, should be one of the most profound and pleasurable aspects of being human." Miranda Harris had been intending to write a book for years. She'd got as far as a folder full of notes when she died suddenly in a car accident in 2019. When her daughter, Jo Swinney, found the notes, she decided to bring her mum's dream to fruition. A Place at the Table was the result. I thought this was going to be a nice friendly book about having people over for dinner. In one sense it is, but it's pretty hard-hitting as well. Miranda and her husband Peter co-founded the environmental charity A Rocha, so the book doesn't shy away from considering the environmental aspects of what we eat and how we live. They also travelled widely and encountered hunger at close quarters; the tension between seeing such poverty and believing in a generous God comes out clearly in A Place at the Table.

Flexitarianism

Hey folks! I learnt a new word today! I can now proudly proclaim myself to be a flexitarian . Yes, I wish that meant I'm in training to be a trapeze artist. Or that I'm a leading world expert on the chemical properties of stretchy materials. All it actually means is that I don't eat meat that much. Well, big deal. That lumps me in with a majority of the world's population, many of whom have no choice about the matter. So why the need for a fancy new word? Because, it seems, that we in the prosperous West have come to regard having bacon for breakfast, chicken sandwiches for lunch and a steak for dinner as entirely normal. But also because we in the prosperous West are starting to realise that might not be an entirely good idea. You know about factory farming, of course. The images of chickens crammed into tiny cages and pigs which never see the sunlight, which we push out of our minds when we reach for our plastic-wrapped package of sausages in t

Hosting Thanksgiving

OK, I have to confess. This will be a very boring Thanksgiving story. Everything went right and it was a lovely day. For an interesting story you need a few things going wrong. I heard a couple of interesting stories this year - like the one about mis-measuring bourbon to go in the stuffing. Apparently if you put far too much in, all the alcohol doesn't boil off. Or the one about going to cook dinner at an Asian friend's house, and discovering at the last minute that she doesn't have any baking trays, and it's quite difficult to roast a turkey in a wok. But as I said, we didn't have so much as a lumpy gravy panic. Where's my food??? We're working on it, baby! So what do you want to know? Well, it was my first Thanksgiving dinner cooked on American soil. Back when I was free and single and shared a house with lots of people who liked to eat, I got into the habit of celebrating the American feast for a few years, until the number of peopl

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog