Christmas Eve greetings from Cyprus

I have written a post each year for the past decade on - or close to - Christmas Eve. So as Richard is currently carving the turkey, with the doors closed to keep the cats out, I thought I might as well continue the tradition. 

The previous posts have started with an illustration of our Christmas cake, each one pretty similar to all the previous ones. I iced this year's cake yesterday, using home-made icing (with aquafaba rather than raw egg white) and since we had almost an entire tub of glacé cherries, I put some of those on, just to make it slightly different from previous years.

This is not, of course a typical Christmas. We miss our sons desperately, particularly Tim who has spent every Christmas with us, other than one, until this year. But travel from the UK is difficult at present, with Covid-test requirements, and now seven days of hotel quarantine. There's no guarantee of being able to get back again, either. So, sadly, it didn't make sense for anyone in the family to come out to Cyprus this year. 

The case numbers in Cyprus have been getting worse, but - so far - we're still allowed to gather with up to eight other people in our home. Church services were cancelled, so everything moved online, including last Sunday evening's carol service. But the government has made a concession to the Orthodox Archbishop and has allowed congregations to meet (so long as they are masked, distanced and no more than one person per three square metres) on Christmas Day only. So we will be able to attend a live service tomorrow, rather than just streamed. 

Our local friends who usually join us for Christmas will, unless some disaster strikes, be coming for lunch tomorrow. Which means that, despite wanting to keep it simpler than usual, I found myself baking and cooking far more than will be eaten in two meals. I like to over-cater - much better than running out, although there has never been a danger of that. Besides, if there's too much food, then I don't have to cook anything much else for several days, and that's always a good thing.

It's been a long and depressing year, and I realise that it has been considerably worse for many others than for us. Our hearts go out to those who have been bereaved, or who have suffered badly with the virus and its after-effects. We hope and pray that the vaccines will be effective, and that, gradually, more normal life can resume in the spring. 

As I said in the last post I wrote, we only sent six Christmas cards this year, and didn't expect to receive many. Until yesterday we had received eight, two of them giving to us by local friends. Then we went to the Post Office to check our box, just in case there was anything... and there were thirteen cards, all from the UK, posted between November 30th and - astonishingly - December 17th.  And one card arrived in our letter box outside our house. 

So in addition to last year's cards, which we always put up as part of our regular decorations (since the majority arrive in January), we have MORE new ones than usual before Christmas this year, displayed on a couple of bookcases:

Rather than rambling on for longer, I will end this post with a photo of our living room a week or two back when Richard put a fire - complete with crackling noises - on our television. 

It almost made the room feel warmer:

Wishing peace and blessings to all for this most unusual Christmas season. 

Advent Sunday

I can remember having an Advent calendar as a child. It was usually a cardboard affair, with a scene of the Nativity, or shepherds, perhaps, in bright colours, sometimes with glitter.  We opened one little window each day during December, with the final one being the 24th, usually - Christmas Eve - with a larger window, and a manger scene. It used to puzzle me why that didn't appear on the 25th until I realised that, of course, Christmas Day is no longer Advent.

I used to love my Advent calendar. Sometimes we had a family one, and took it in turns to open the little windows, but at least a couple of times I had one of my own. I knew what was coming, but I loved the anticipation, nevertheless: the reminders of the background to the Christmas story, leading up to the Nativity. 

By the time my sons were small, Advent calendars had become more secular. We tried to get 'religious' themed ones, but it was quite difficult. Advent calendars were more likely to have jolly Santa figures, or Christmas trees - a countdown to Christmas, certainly, but really nothing to do with Advent.  At least once someone gave us one with chocolates inside, which seemed even more of a bad idea, giving extra sugar to children who were already excited about Christmas coming. 

Nowadays, of course they have become almost entirely commercialised. It's possible to get Advent calendars with all kinds of gifts - with beauty products, or wine, or even cheese samples.  This, for instance, is a site that recommends the 'best' Advent calendars for 2020: I looked at the first few entries in the gallery, and the least expensive was over $30. 

Advent is a Latin word for 'coming', and is used to indicate the arrival of an important person or thing. So I suppose it makes sense for those of a non-religious persuasion to think of it as waiting for the arrival of Santa Claus. Which is all very well for children, but those expensive Advent calendars with perfumes or wine are not intended for the young. I suppose they have become an excuse for yet more spending in the festive season - and this year, with so many shops struggling, it's perhaps a good way to make money at last. 

Of course, most years Advent doesn't actually start on December 1st. And unlike Lent, Advent is not a fixed length of time.  There are four Sundays in Advent, so when Christmas is a Friday, as will happen this year, the fourth Sunday of Advent will be December 19th, and today - November 29th - is the first Sunday of Advent. 

In the Anglican Church, which is in our background and where we're now established again, Advent is the start of the church year. We were wished 'Happy new year' this morning in the church service.  The cloths on the table - and the clergy stoles - had changed to purple, and there was an empty scene under the table, waiting for the Nativity scene.

Naturally - it's traditional on the first Sunday of Advent one of the songs was 'O come, o come Emmanuel'. It's much loved by many, but I admit to finding it a bit dreary. On the other hand, I really like the more modern 'Christ be our Light', which was another of today's songs. 

There was a new Advent service sheet too, and an Advent wreath, which just about shows on the left of the photo above, in the middle. It has four candles, and the first one was lit today.

All symbolic, of course, and not everybody appreciates symbolism of this kind. But I find it helpful, and I like the progression of the church calendar.  In Advent we think about the first coming of Jesus, the one that is celebrated in Nativity plays and Christmas carols, but we also think about the second coming  - the end times - something that feels all the more real towards the end of this extremely difficult year. 

At home we don't currently have any purple candles, and I haven't seen any in the shops. I was thinking of buying a red one for Advent, but I couldn't find one I liked. Most candles in the shops currently are scented, and I really dislike candles with scents. They're not good for cats, either. But we had an unused white candle, so I put away the green one that's been on the table since we stopped using ceiling fans,  and started a new white one at lunch-time today: 

And as an aside, not relevant to Advent, today also happens to be a very important day in my family: my father's birthday. So my brother arranged a family Zoom call - the first time we've done this, though we plan to repeat it regularly - and it worked extremely well. 

Lighting Candles

 A week ago, I realised that we had stopped using our ceiling fans. One by one, we slowed them down, finally turning them off so that the lights work without them. 

Which meant that we could start using candles again. And since, in the Anglican Church year, it's officially 'ordinary time' (despite this year having been anything but ordinary) I got out a green candle. We'd used it a few times previously, but it still has plenty of wax, and there's something special about having a candle lit while we're eating, particularly as it's now dark well before supper-time. 

It's not something we've done regularly over the years. We've often had a candle on the table around Christmas-time, but not long-term. However we've been given candles as gifts, from time to time, so I had quite a collection of them in my ornament cupboard, a few un-started, some of them slightly used.  

I suppose the idea of using them regularly started last December. Instead of lighting an elderly or small candle, we actually bought a new one, and lit it at almost every main meal over the Christmas and New Year season:

When it had almost gone, we realised that we liked having a candle, so I got out a red, star-shaped one. And when that started to collapse, I found a spherical pink one:

We had realised that having the candles on little glass plates was all very well, but if wax dripped off it went onto the wood of our table, and that wasn't so great. So we were using a table mat, but that wasn't ideal either.

At the end of January, when we were briefly in the UK, we took Richard's mother out to eat at a garden centre, and she bought us a little tray that I had been looking at - one which I thought would be ideal for candles.  The spherical pink candle was burning low, so I added a purple one, and the tray caught any drips perfectly:

By the end of March Cyprus was in lockdown mode; we lit a special candle to have in the window, on days when the world churches were praying specifically about the pandemic.  And as it was Lent, traditionally a time for purple linen in the Anglican church, we were using two purple candles:

I should add that I had not previously previously noticed liturgical colours. But during the lockdown, we started a new Facebook page for St Helena's Church, and I thought it would be a good idea to have a photo of the communion table area with the appropriate coloured linen. So I started taking notice of the colours used - and we just happened to have unused purple candles. 

By the time Easter came around, the purple candles were pretty much used up, and I remembered that, years ago, we were given a orange candle as an Easter decoration. So I decided we would burn it this year:

We were starting to take our candles for granted; lighting them at mealtimes became a routine. And then the weather got warmer, and in the middle of May, when Summer really started, we switched on the ceiling fan in the dining room while eating.

Ceiling fans and candles are not compatible. The candle went out. 

I moved it to the other end of the table, but it didn't help.  So, as ceiling fans seemed to be much more important during the summer months, I cleaned the tray, and the little glass plate things, and put them all away for five and a half months. 

There were a couple of scented candles in my cupboard, but I really don't like those - the scent gives me a headache, and I know that scented candles can be toxic for cats. So I got rid of them. I don't know where they came from - possibly gifts, or more likely a 'gift exchange' game with former colleagues around twenty years ago.  I don't like throwing out anything that isn't rubbish, but reminded myself that I was never going to use them, so it was really just decluttering, which is generally considered a Good Thing. 

The only ones left in my cupboard now are white; we also have quite a lot of tea-lights. But we bought them from Ikea - and although they seemed like excellent value, they don't last very long, and don't burn all that evenly. 

Perhaps we might even buy another new candle to use in December....