Advent Candles

Today is Advent Sunday, the beginning of the season leading up to Christmas.  As you may know we love marking the seasons properly, so we always have an advent candle of some kind.  This year we have two!  One is the usual slim one with numbers that we've put by the fireplace to light each evening.

The other candle we have in the middle of our table.  I had made the wreath last week at WI, and started wondering whether it would last until Christmas

Then we had the idea that it could be our advent wreath.  So today we lit our candle at our Sunday lunch.  We shall light it at each meal until Christmas, then it shall become our Christmas centre piece.

 

I think I've probably posted the following poem before, but I do love Betjeman and it is rather apt with all the black Friday nonsense that is swirling around.

Advent 1955
by John Betjeman

The Advent wind begins to stir
 With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
 It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
 And in between we only see
 Clouds hurrying across the sky
 And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
 And branches bending to the gale
 Against great skies all silver pale
 The world seems travelling into space,
 And travelling at a faster pace
 Than in the leisured summer weather
 When we and it sit out together,
 For now we feel the world spin round
 On some momentous journey bound -
 Journey to what? to whom? to where?
 The Advent bells call out 'Prepare,
 Your world is journeying to the birth
 Of God made Man for us on earth.'
 
 And how, in fact, do we prepare
 The great day that waits us there -
 For the twenty-fifth day of December,
 The birth of Christ? For some it means
 An interchange of hunting scenes
 On coloured cards, And I remember
 Last year I sent out twenty yards,
 Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
 To people that I scarcely know -
 They'd sent a card to me, and so
 I had to send one back. Oh dear!
 Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
 Or is it, which is less surprising,
 My pride gone in for advertising?
 The only cards that really count
 Are that extremely small amount
 From real friends who keep in touch
 And are not rich but love us much
 Some ways indeed are very odd
 By which we hail the birth of God.
 
 We raise the price of things in shops,
 We give plain boxes fancy tops
 And lines which traders cannot sell
 Thus parcell'd go extremely well
 We dole out bribes we call a present
 To those to whom we must be pleasant
 For business reasons. Our defence is
 These bribes are charged against expenses
 And bring relief in Income Tax
 Enough of these unworthy cracks!
 'The time draws near the birth of Christ'.
 A present that cannot be priced
 Given two thousand years ago
 Yet if God had not given so
 He still would be a distant stranger
 And not the Baby in the manger.

The coming of the light

Today is Advent Sunday - the beginning of the countdown to the feast of Christmas.   In the church, in spite of all the chaos and busyness of the season, it is a time of quiet anticipation and expectation, a celebration of light coming into darkness.  This time of year sees us move from Autumn into Winter, when the trees shed their leaves, the temperatures drop and we move into the darkest part of the year. 

In John Betjeman's poem Advent 1955, there is a lovely passage about how it feels this time of year

"It’s dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry"

 

 

Lighting a candle in the darkness signifies light, warmth and hope. The act of lighting a candle or even kindling a fire seems to stir something within us.  A candle makes us stop and consider, to be quiet for a while.  In this time of frantic noise and flashing electric lights, to light a candle slows everything down and gives us time and space.

 

 

 

 

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Eleanor Roosevelt



Days of frost and candlelight

Now that it is December and we've had some quite deep frosts it feels like autumn has gone and winter has arrived.  I've been ill for the last couple of weeks so my intention to start tidying the garden hasn't quite started yet.  And now its almost Christmas and the garden appears increasingly forlorn.  However even in the cold, beauty is found in the frost and ice

In all the rush and busy chaos of the run up to Christmas, its even more important to spend time in nature, watching the seasons change.  At Hazel Cottage, the hazel tree is now almost bare.  The bare branches make it far easier to see the teeming bird life that bounces around the bird table.  The blue tits and great tits are frequent visitors in little gangs and we've seen a wren and dunnock recently too.  If we are still and quiet, they ignore us and carry on with their feeding.  The fearless robins appear regardless of what we do, although I imagine they are disappointed when we just walk through the garden and don't dig over the soil for them.  And the minute we walk back into the house, the blackbirds appear, the pigeons flutter in and the squirrel steals peanuts from the feeder again.  I love the idea that even when we aren't there, the garden is still teeming with life.

Our advent candle

Winter-Time
   
by Robert Louis Stevenson   

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,  
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;  
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,  
A blood-red orange, sets again.  
  
Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;  
And shivering in my nakedness,  
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.  
  
Close by the jolly fire I sit  
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore  
The colder countries round the door.  
  
When to go out, my nurse doth wrap  
Me in my comforter and cap;  
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.  
  
Black are my steps on silver sod;  
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;  
And tree and house, and hill and lake,  
Are frosted like a wedding-cake.