What evokes Christmas for you is so closely tied to your own culture: the sights, the sounds. And the smells. Given that our brain links scent to memory in such a powerful way, often a key part of the season is the smells. That’s why supermarkets stock bottles of ready-made mulled wine, and much more …
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I have been deliberating about the best way to put this. I could have said ‘making your own decorations’, but that felt rather similar to an earlier post, so I went with crafting instead. Crafting is big business, of course. People will pay good money for hand-crafted this and hand-made that. Which is good, too, …
Christmas decorations. Never mind clouds of angels, it’s the clouds of dust as you bring out the box that remains hidden all year. The art collection that reveals the quality of your handiwork, and the aesthetic instincts of your children. Something like that. It may instead be your annual reminder of the multiple uses for a …
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You know this one. It’s the extra piece of paper that falls out when you open the Christmas card. The whistle-stop tour of someone’s life over the last year. They’ve been the subject of books, containing spoof round robin letters. They’re a staple of pre-Christmas news stories, from the BBC to the Daily Mail. Are …
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Readings in the build-up to Christmas isn’t something new. The web is full of daily readings for advent, pitched at a whole range of different ages and stages. What does it mean to share a book – or a series of stories – over nearly a month? === Christmas Past I don’t remember regular reading …