#7 Traditional pre-Christmas practices

[kaberett]

Okay, so this one is (~surprise~) a bit fraught for me, because a lot of my culture-of-origin identity is very bound up with Mitteleuropäischer expressions of Catholicism, so I end up feeling a lot more adrift with the whole atheist thing than is wholly comfortable.

All of which said, my traditional stuff is:

• you make a wreath from misc evergreen from your garden (or, in the more specific sense, misc evergreen you've nicked from a Cambridge college's gardens); you place your Advent candle in the middle of it, and add a candle round the edge for each Sunday of Advent in the appropriate colors as they happen. Advent is very much a time of preparation & reflection: to think about what one has done and what one has failed to do, and all that.
  
• the 6th of December, Heiliger Nikolaus: on the evening of the 5th, you polish your shoes and leave them lined up neatly beneath a window, and awake to find (if you've been good!) that Nikolaus has been by in the night and filled them with goodies, traditionally nuts & clementines & chocolate coins. (My mother normally manages to source chocolate Schilling - when that was relevant - and these days usually gets her hands on chocolate Euro. Me, I noticed that M&S were selling chocolate brussels sprouts and thought it would be worth it for the laugh). If you have not then instead the Krampus chases you with switches...
  
• on the other side of the family, my father gets Very Definite about making mince pies in the week running up to Christmas; he normally makes a round twelve dozen, as I recall, glazed with water+sugar (because my baby brother is lactose intolerant). He makes the pastry - standard unsweetened shortcrust - but usually buys in the mincemeat; I am still working through the batch I made a couple of years ago, during The Winter Of My Discontent.
  
• (My mother makes fruitcake and steamed puddings a little while in advance; she makes the marzipan and royal icing, and in deference to my tastes leaves the glacé cherries out.)
  
• Otherwise, preparation waits until Christmas Eve: present wrapping and bringing in (and decorating) the tree (which lives in the garden), and setting up the crib, and so on. (The Wise Men then advance from the far side of the tableau to the stable over the course of the twelve days.) We listen to the King's Carol Service because my father, bizarrely, insists; my mother staples the Christmas cards to lengths of ribbon and hangs them from the walls; we get out the Strohsterne etc.

... and then we are into The Day Itself, which involves Church and arguments and I am kiiiiiind of intending to run back to London to spend the day with a bunch of heathens this year before heading back on Boxing Day.

Comments

[ghoti]

<3 This is the kind of Christmas post that does not make me knee-jerk angry. Perhaps because it is not the everything-is-red-and-green and bright lights and consumerism that is most of Christmas these days.

[kaberett]

Ha, yes, consumerism!secular!Christmas makes me very cross (IF I WANTED TO DO THE THING I'D STILL BE PART OF THE THING). This post is intended very much as "here are my familial practices" rather than "here are things I actually do".

(e.g. I completely left out the Traditional Reread of Hogfather and Traditional Watching of Nightmare Before Christmas, both of which are for me about the importance of trying & the importance of belief & most particularly belief in social constructs like justice and mercy and ruth).

[ghoti]

What I was trying and failing to say (maybe? words are hard.) is that it was nice to stumble across a Christmas post that is actually about Christmas. Or at least the lead-up thereto. (I think I feel similarly about Easter wrst the bunny and chocolate vs. the early morning going to church and being all yay!Jesus thing.) ((And I say all of this as a very much observer and not participant. Because all my family observances/traditions are VERY NOT any of these holidays.))

And whether or not you participate, your family traditions sound lovely and comfortable and warm and familiar &c.

Your personal traditions also sound lovely. <3

[alexseanchai]

Never actually read Hogfather (Pratchett?) or seen Nightmare Before Christmas. I take it they're good?

[birke]

Oh, I had forgotten that Advent wreaths had colors. My only exposure to the Christian kind of Advent was in 3rd grade. We lit the candles as a class once a week.

Heiliger Nikolaus sounds like a nice holiday. Does it take the place of Christmas stockings on the 25th?

[sfred]

I would like to know what colours! Our (staunch liberal-Baptist) ones were just four red and then a white.

[kaberett]

This bit of wikipedia explains weird Western Roman Catholicism better than my dubious memory!

[sfred]

Ah, cool - thank you. (Sorry, I could have googled that.)

[kaberett]

No worries! It means that I reminded myself of what the fuck was going on (like I knew they were purple and pink, I just couldn't remember why or in what pattern...).

[sfred]

:-) I am a bit like that with some Baptist stuff.

[kaberett]

Not... exactly, and certainly not in the context of my family (stockings were another bizarrely mainstream thing my snobby violently atheist father did/does).

[birke]

Speaking of atheists and Christmas -- my mother said recently that she thought the best/most popular parts of Christmas were pagan anyway. Trees, decorating, gift-giving, celebrating light in darkness.

[ghoti]

Here in the Northern Hemisphere I am ALL ABOUT bringing the light back. Regardless of how one celebrates that, it is DARK and MISERABLE and GLOOMY and SNOW, and make it stop, dammit.

[birke]

I feel you on that. It's already dark out at 4:24 PM.

[davidgillon]

he normally makes a round twelve dozen

Shudders! Mince pies, so not my favourite seasonal dish!

[calissa]

I can see we harbour similar feelings towards glace cherries.

<3