Looking at the ornaments on my Christmas tree, that I’ve been collecting for twenty years now, I’m struck this year, about how many of them convey a sense of travelling.
A winged angel, a bird, a pair of red Santa boots, a train, a unicorn and a white-clad fairy on a sled. All unashamedly old-fashioned in their sense of Christmas. The mor…
Looking at the ornaments on my Christmas tree, that I’ve been collecting for twenty years now, I’m struck this year, about how many of them convey a sense of travelling.
A winged angel, a bird, a pair of red Santa boots, a train, a unicorn and a white-clad fairy on a sled. All unashamedly old-fashioned in their sense of Christmas. The more otherworldly, the better.
And so it was with childhood Christmases. Christmas Day was one of only two days of the year, that the family would be “off-duty” from the pub I grew up in. Even then, we opened for two hours between noon and 2pm for our friends and regulars and especially for those who probably didn’t have anywhere else to go on Christmas Day.
Nowhere to go, in a small, rural, edge-of-the-Atlantic town, with no businesses open and no internet, seems like another world. No visiting if you didn’t have a car, or friends to come to your house.
I adored Christmas a child and it still occupies a particular place in my heart. It is about the birth of Jesus, sure. But it’s also a midwinter festival of light, a time to hibernate and dream, a time of openings – the portal to this magical midwinter world, a new year ahead and closings – the old year.
My Christmas decorations, have been little anchors, for many years now. Seeing me through all my London moves. Even if the place I was living in, was not terribly lovely – many of them weren’t – my Christmas tree decorations were points of joy and pride, a way to connect to myself and my childhood, while honouring a season that generally means a lot to Irish people. I even bought tree lights that were the same as the ones we had on the tree at home in childhood.
Barbara… how good to find this from you on what is now (of necessity) my once-a-week day with this project. I think you must be the Barbara I enjoyed that good phone conversation with, as the place you describe here, and the quality of the prose, both feel like yours. I wonder if I’m right? It will be such a pleasure to add this story to the collection, and to have the prospect of other pieces by you ahead of me. Before I can curate it onto the book site though, I’d need you to reply here with a last name (can be pseudonymous) or an initial please - with so many contributors now a lot of first names are beginning to duplicate… But that’s the admin side of this project… the soul side is receiving first pieces through from people whose writing I already know a little and admire. Txxx
Looking at the ornaments on my Christmas tree, that I’ve been collecting for twenty years now, I’m struck this year, about how many of them convey a sense of travelling.
A winged angel, a bird, a pair of red Santa boots, a train, a unicorn and a white-clad fairy on a sled. All unashamedly old-fashioned in their sense of Christmas. The more otherworldly, the better.
And so it was with childhood Christmases. Christmas Day was one of only two days of the year, that the family would be “off-duty” from the pub I grew up in. Even then, we opened for two hours between noon and 2pm for our friends and regulars and especially for those who probably didn’t have anywhere else to go on Christmas Day.
Nowhere to go, in a small, rural, edge-of-the-Atlantic town, with no businesses open and no internet, seems like another world. No visiting if you didn’t have a car, or friends to come to your house.
I adored Christmas a child and it still occupies a particular place in my heart. It is about the birth of Jesus, sure. But it’s also a midwinter festival of light, a time to hibernate and dream, a time of openings – the portal to this magical midwinter world, a new year ahead and closings – the old year.
My Christmas decorations, have been little anchors, for many years now. Seeing me through all my London moves. Even if the place I was living in, was not terribly lovely – many of them weren’t – my Christmas tree decorations were points of joy and pride, a way to connect to myself and my childhood, while honouring a season that generally means a lot to Irish people. I even bought tree lights that were the same as the ones we had on the tree at home in childhood.
Barbara… how good to find this from you on what is now (of necessity) my once-a-week day with this project. I think you must be the Barbara I enjoyed that good phone conversation with, as the place you describe here, and the quality of the prose, both feel like yours. I wonder if I’m right? It will be such a pleasure to add this story to the collection, and to have the prospect of other pieces by you ahead of me. Before I can curate it onto the book site though, I’d need you to reply here with a last name (can be pseudonymous) or an initial please - with so many contributors now a lot of first names are beginning to duplicate… But that’s the admin side of this project… the soul side is receiving first pieces through from people whose writing I already know a little and admire. Txxx