Christmas preparations Archives

Is time moving too quickly for you? Are you feeling harassed by how fast Christmas appears to be approaching? Do you feel the need to slow time down, or stop it all together while you catch up?

Perhaps one antidote to this is by telling yourself how many days you still have to accomplish everything, not how few days there are left to you. Perhaps you also need to prioritise and decide to leave something out this year. Within reason, only try to do what you can. And before you become desperate, ask for help.

I would just like to point out that ‘Christmas’ is a whole season which contains many events. It is not just one day – the 25th December – but encompasses the whole of that month (and often the end of November as well), as well as the original Twelve Days of Christmas which only end on the 5th January.

How does one define Christmas anyway? For me, it has never just been about decorations, gifts and lots to eat… it is how we feel while we are engaged in these activities. It all depends on our perspective and outlook on life.

My Christmas begins with washing all my pots and dishes on my kitchen dresser sometime in November, riding them of any residual summer dust. This never fails to fill me with joy as I know what the action signifies – the beginning a wonderfully warm and happy time. Then there is the baking of the Christmas cakes on Stir-Up Sunday. It is also in the shortening days, teatime dusk, stormy grey skies and the nip of frost.

Writing seasonal cards and letters, completing making gifts, choosing, sorting and wrapping, cutting the first evergreenery to bring inside to deck the halls – and yes, the planning, the making of lists and menus, the cleaning, cooking and shopping… to me, this is all Christmas, and can bring just as much fun and pleasure as the main day itself, in its own way… given the chance.

Turn back the time to childhood. Youngsters feel the magic of Christmas – that indefinable promise, excitement and presence which lurks in candlelit shadows, snowy scenes and the marvellous anticipation. It threads its way through all the schemes, surprises and plans that we each make… it dodges in and out of our dreams of perfection, it peeps at us from the burgeoning shops filled with decorations and echoes to us from a well-loved Christmas carol.

What we need to do is to catch hold of this ephemeral magic and bring it into our everyday lives. Making the very most of each little situation and occasion is a good way to begin. Play some seasonal music, burn some spicy incense, make yourself a hot chocolate or pour yourself a little glass of wine to help get you in the mood and set the scene. More than that, include someone else, make someone laugh, compliment someone on how they look, lift someone’s spirits, phone them, tell someone how much you care for them… reach out to others…

And don’t forget yourself in all of this: nurture and care for yourself and make sure that you find something satisfying, joyful, and yes, even magical, in the proceedings. This may just be by sitting still and quiet for five minutes and allowing yourself to simply ‘be’.

Remember the natural world, too. Feed your wild birds and mammals which might not have hibernated fully, take extra care of domestic pets, especially those who are growing elderly and might find the cold, wet months more of a strain on aging painful joints. Retreat out into the fresh air as a way of regenerating your energy, and give joyful thanks that it is all there, just waiting to support and heal you.

Yes, Christmas often means lots of extra work, exhaustion, frayed nerves, an empty purse and being at odds with one’s nearest and dearest, not to mention having to cope with awkward and uncooperative people. This is simply life, but all the difficulties are suddenly magnified by that insistent little spirit of Christmas magic which refuses to leave any of us alone during these early winter months. and which spurs us on to increasingly more… but also encourages us to seek that indefinable magical element of Christmas.

Give yourself a few moments. Smile. Open your heart to your tasks, to your people, to yourself… this will allow the magic of Christmas to come to your aid, to enter in, to flourish… and then I can promise you that you can expect the totally unexpected and, yes, a little magic to come your way.

Try it and see…

This picture is of my drawing room, all ready and prepared for our rather more seriously adult Calan Gaeaf/Hallowe’en celebrations last Sunday. The first day after the clocks ‘went back’, the end of the Celtic year and beginning of Winter.

I chose this picture because it typifies how I feel and what I like about this time of year – a drawing in and coming together of friends and family… a time to sit and cogitate, drift and dream beside the hearth… a chance to process all that has happened in one’s life over the light, sunny spring, summer and autumn months…

This is a special time – a few weeks when we can stop and draw breath, reconnect to our roots and grow into ourselves again before all the craziness of Midwinter and Christmas celebration engulfs us. It is a quiet, very personal time. My deeply hidden, secretive and passionate Scorpio self revels in the shadows, the darkness, and all that which is mysteriously hidden and only hinted at. I LOVE this time of year! Perhaps that is why I chose to be born now? But it speaks to all of us.

When I was a child I believed that it was the close proximity to all the excitement of Christmas which made this time of year so very precious and special to me, but it isn’t that at all, just the reverse. Midwinter/Christmas is a part of it, but the deep resonances of heath and home, of ancient connections and ancestors, of rest and rejuvenation and reaffirmation of belief in and love of life reach very much further into our genetic history… our psyche… the very fibre of our being.

Instead of shrinking away from the cold and the dark of winter, I like to enter wholeheartedly into each activity which the change in season and temperature brings. I mark the day when I need to once more get out my thick winter dresses and the evening I first need to wear my warmer nightdresses or fill my hot water bottle. My taste for certain foods changes too, and once more we are into days of baking cakes rich and heavy with fruit, sticky ginger parkin dark with molasses, steaming, savoury stews and casseroles and one of my childhood favourites, ‘taty pie (meat and potato pie) with pale pastry crust and accompanied by well buttered and peppered root veg from the garden.

Longer evenings mean more time to talk and share with the family, to enjoy leisurely meals, to be unhurried. They also facilitate opportunities to plan and create treats for the Midwinter festivities, secret surprises for all to enjoy with all the glee and little or none of the corrosive pressure. And they provide the time and space to settle with a good book, a long neglected hobby, or simply the space to simply be…

So, please don’t reject the winter – grab it with both hands and thoroughly enjoy it while it is here . The long, light, frenetically busy spring and summer months will soon be back with us. Take this opportunity to absorb the nourishing darkness, sink into the shadows, relax and find yourself again.