Christmas and the Mystery of the Missing Spoons

 
We had some friends over for supper on Boxing Day - or Stephen's Day as I always forget to call it.
It was a lovely, informal evening of food and wine and chat.
#2 Son was home for Christmas, and as he is an excellent cook, I was only too delighted to have him help with all the preparations. He made some lovely baby peppers stuffed with a spicy cous-cous, feta, mushroom and spinach concoction; and butternut squash in a creme fraiche and mustard sauce.
Along with roasted sweet potatoes, Christmas gammon and Jamie Oliver's gorgeous rainbow salad, it all went down a treat.
We probably could have stopped there, but there were several puddings too - two of them based around oranges and bitter marmalade.
Yum.

Why are rooms only ever tidy once a year?

I know that many - quite rightly - lament the fact that Christmas has become a meaningless financial blow-out.
It isn't in our house. I don't mean to sound priggish or virtuous, but for one thing we've never had enough money to do that, whether we wanted to or not.
But we do tend to eat a lot. Not caviar and champagne, but a lot, nonetheless.
So I guess Christmas is perhaps as much of a blow-out, just not in financial terms.
But after the rain and the drear and the sheer, utter greyness of the year's last quarter, there is something totally wonderful about sitting around a house full of fairy lights, firelight and Christmas decorations, whilst eating, drinking and laughing with friends and family.

I bit the bullet big time this year. For ages, while the boys were away, either working or simply being too far away to travel home for the season, we didn't have a tree. There didn't seem to be much point, and oddly, in this part of the country where so many seem to grow, it can be hard to find a nice one.
When I was visiting my parents in Suffolk in early December, the lovely, old-fashioned greengrocer opposite their village house had masses of them, clustered outside his shop on little wooden stands. Each one was as gorgeous as the last, and I'd quite happily have brought any of them back with me, except it would have caused a bit of a problem at the airport.
Then, when I got home, I decided we'd just not bother, but after a bit of thought, I realised that actually, despite my years of abstinence, the tree is an integral part of what Christmas is. So I bought an artificial one.
I'm slightly wincing, just confessing to that, but you know what? I think it was a good decision. OK, it took ages to put up (but only because I'd never done it before. And there were no instructions), but it looks good, it gave me a reason to unearth all my favourite decorations, and there's something about a tree glowing in the corner of the room that takes me back to all the Christmases that ever were, and kindles warm memories that I can't even place or name.

The friends who came to visit said they liked it too, and it's still there, reminding me that there are a few days of the season still to go.
A tree isn't our only traditional 'event' - there's the Christmas Jigsaw. The In-Charge rather turned his nose up at my choice of puzzle for this year's festivities. I wasn't really surprised - I chose it because I liked it, not with him in mind this time round. It's a sort of collage of Victorian Christmas designs in cigarette card format.
Lovely.
So after our Boxing Day glut was over, #2 Son and I moved on to conquering the puzzle.We transferred it onto the kitchen table (on it's handy pin-board) and spent a couple of evenings and a rainy day putting it together.
It was a tricky one,as they seem to have introduced some very weird shapes that are, quite frankly, not only meaningless,but which don't actually hold the thing together. What is that about?
Anyway, it looks great, and I'm now postponing the day when it has to be broken up and go back in the box.

My lovely Victorian inspired jigsaw

We went for a walk on our favourite beach as well. The ModelDogs raced and chased and sank into deep pools left by the tide, and were generally thrilled with life. They looked splendid in their special Christmas collars.

SuperModel is still afraid of accidentally dissolving

And we started Christmas, as always, with the service of 9 Lessons and Carols from Kings College, Cambridge. It was rather a bitty affair this year, and not the satisfying fix it usually is for me, as our broadband is so appalling these days that it came and went, went being the more operative of the two.
Fortunately I have a CD of another service, from long ago, so after the official one had fizzled away in a haze of buffering silence, I put that on instead, before we set off for a jolly dinner at a friend's house to welcome Christmas in. During the evening the rain even stopped, the clouds parted, and I went outside and stared at the full moon. I didn't catch a glimpse of Father Christmas speeding through the sky, but it was magical all the same.

Model Dog likes to open her own present all by herself

So it was a very good Christmas, despite missing #1 Son like toothache.
But there still remains a mystery, that several days into the New Year remains unsolved.
All the silver spoons that were used at our Boxing Day party have disappeared without trace.
The In-Charge - apparently - washed them up, dried them and put them on the table in the late hours after our guests had departed.
(So I can't even ponder whether they each left with a spoon in their top pocket or reticule.)
It is a puzzle even more brain-defying than the Victorian cigarette cards, and one that my repeated searches of drawers, dressers, rubbish bags, hidden corners and laundry baskets has failed to solve.
My sister, who also lives in a very old house - as does my mother - swears it is the pixies.
Well, I hope when they've finished staring at their reflections, the pixies will feel moved to return them.
To the right house.

 

The birds had a Christmas present too - a wreath full of goodies

Turning

I lay in bed last night and listened to the wind howling through the trees and around the chimney pots, the hail spattering against the window panes and the distant rhythm of surf pounding on the shore.
Bleak midwinter indeed.
But, safe in my warm nest I didn't feel bleak. This is a time of year when there is something vibrant pulsing at the core, and when night enfolds you it is like black velvet wrapped around a bright kernel, so in the heart of the darkness, the wildness outside lulled me to sleep very quickly.
It is a time of year when the night is often better than the day. This morning was possibly the most horrible day ever spawned. Rain, rain and more rain, borne on winds gusting to 105km/hr.

A couple of weeks ago, someone told me we were going to have blizzards, and snow lasting into mid-January. To my mind, an infinitely preferable alternative.

But heigh-ho. It's only weather, after all, and I have spent the day in my kitchen, all the animals curled up in their various beds, snoozing the hours away. I've been decorating my Christmas tree, wrapping a few presents, and writing last minute Christmas cards.

My Christmas tree

My friend Mairead posted a lovely piece on her blog recently called In Praise of Christmas Cards which was very apposite and beautifully written. She mourns the slow decline of Christmas Cards, she feels they are an important part of our tradition and - perhaps more to the point - our personal history. She is, of course, quite right. How can an email possibly compare? However warm the wishes, it doesn't sit on your mantelpiece looking pretty and seasonal, or last. And as for texts - well, there is nothing to be said.

She and my mother are as one in this, although even Mairead probably doesn't expend as much zeal in the matter as my Mama. In truth, I have never known anyone who takes Christmas cards more seriously - she does a proper job, with news and personal letters enclosed - she probably thinks a 'round robin' is that plumptious little creature on her bird table. And she has them mailed in good time, not like my last minute scrabble to catch the final posting day.

It was today, the final posting day for Christmas. No surprise that I was writing cards, then.
I looked out of the window regularly, waiting for a momentary pause in the rain so I could scoot down to the post box, but the passing hours only brought more rain, blowing ever more sideways. Being washed down to the post office did not seem an appealing prospect , but then suddenly an angel appeared. It is traditional of course, at Christmas. This angel took the form of my friend the Talentui Goddess. I didn't see her wings at first, only when she announced that she was on her way into town did I spot the soft feathers fluttering behind her chic hat.
'You're not going to the post office?' I asked, hardly daring to hope for such a reprieve.
'No,' she said. 'But I can. I'm going past it.'
What a honey.


If pushed, I'd have to admit that it's not cards, but Christmas carols that are the essential part of the season for me. I don't mean bashing out O Come All Ye Faithful with some person coughing on your left side and someone else blowing their nose to your right, but rather the lucid perfection of King's College choristers singing John Rutter or The Coventry Carol or something angelic along those lines. It's not possible for me to make mince pies, or write cards, or decorate trees without those clear voices in the background. 

Essential Christmas

But I do love Christmas cards.
I don't send many these days - postage being so exorbitant - but I am very choosy about what I buy. They have to pass some indefinable yardstick. They have to really appeal to me, even if they are not conventionally beautiful. And - pleased as I am to receive any cards at all these days, I have a definite marking system for the ones I do get. Every year I keep one or two that I specially like, which are hung vertically on ribbons, and each Christmas all the 'specials' from previous years come out of their box and decorate the walls all over again.

One of my 'specials'

Perhaps loving Christmas cards is also about anticipation. To me, this last week or so before Christmas is almost the best bit of all.

I love midwinter, the days getting shorter and shorter, the trees bare against the darkening sky, the stars fierce and brilliant, houses filled with light and, despite the horrors of the world, everyone looking forward to something, whatever that may be.

Here we are, in the deepest dark of the year, the long, cold reaches of winter still to come, the slow return of the light tantalisingly ahead as the earth pauses - pivoting, slowly turning towards her next brave horizon; yet hidden within the folds of her dark skirts is Christmas, like a warm heart glowing in the depths of the night, a bright kernel shrouded in velvet.