It's Gaudete (Rejoicing) Sunday, the week where we light the pink candle. These are my Advent candles for this year. My four year old grandson solemnly informed me today that they are the wrong colour, they shouldn't be red but purple.


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There seem to be fewer people putting lots of decorations outside their houses this year. Talking to someone else they had noticed the same and thought it was because of the pre-Christmas storms we had last year and this had caused too much damage to what they had outside ( Read more... )

The council decided to cancel its official light switch on this year. There was going to be entertainment, food stalls and a market as well as the lights going on for this Christmas. But the day originally chosen coincided with the arrival of Storm Bert and they decided it was too risky to go ahead with it. So it was postponed for a fortnight, ( Read more... )

Last year was a very good year for holly berries, so many that the birds didn't finish eating them until January. This year the trees are resting and we don't have any berries.

I just wish the weather would improve enough for me to get into the garden and cut some branches. It's been gloomy and drizzling for days.


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You only go to all the effort of making Christmas celebrations to enjoy the company. This was a family gathering Christmas evening 1953. You can just see part of OH's head on the left.


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Knitted crib figures have become very popular. I saw these shepherds in St Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham, a few years ago.


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We went into Birmingham a couple of weeks ago to see the recently reopened art gallery and the Christmas market. This is a new decoration in one of the squares, it's enormous and you can go into it.


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It's the Second Sunday in Advent, and both the Old Testament and Gospel readings talk about filling valleys and lowering hills to make a smooth path. So here's a piece of railway equipment to do just that.


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Someone commented to me about the paper bells on the tree a couple of days ago. Well I don't have any of the paper ornaments from seventy years ago, but I do still have a few of these plastic stars that I have been folding up and storing for at least forty years.


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Happy St Nicolas Day. This statue of the saint is in the church in La Voulte-sur-Rhone, France ( Read more... )