LOVE – The 2nd Advent

December the 1st is a day of unbridled excitement for me. It is the first day of summer, meteorological summer, the month of long, long days and public holidays and sunshine (fingers crossed) and celebration. It’s the end of another school year and the beginning of weeks of lazy mornings with nowhere to rush to and no arguments about forgotten homework or lunch. The second Advent candle, love, has been lit. Christmas is coming!

Christmas at Ardley is the season of responsible serving of alcohol at the pub with no beer.

Ian (husband)

Christmas here at Ardley takes a healthy dash of tradition from religion, adds a stirring of cultures other than my own and applies it to our atheist Australian household. Our rituals are strictly secular but we are protective of them.  

Tradition is a wonderful and fulfilling routine that brings love, joy, predictability and stability to our lives. There is real comfort to be found in the regularity and repetition of ceremony. We observe Christmas from December 1 – 31 (a contentious debate I refuse to enter into, it’s just the way we do it!) then everything is put away to dream of until the next one rolls around again. The Advent calendar with both chocolates and beads appeared magically on the morning of the 1st ready to come together over the season to make the 2022 Christmas Advent suncatcher. Mr M has cordoned off a space in the fridge where he will hoard his collection of Advent chocolates until January then eat them in a frenzy borne of boredom one day. 

Boxes of traditional European Christmas decorations are ceremoniously opened. Wooden figurines from Bayern are carefully placed together safely (hopefully) out of reach of dogs and curious cats. Each of us has particular decorations that hold special meaning that we are responsible for hanging on the tree*. Baubles with our names on them. Decorations gifted us by friends and family. The beaded ball made in memory of my Nan and the bluebird she used to hang for us. It’s the first year where we aren’t all here for the event but Ms G and Mr A will find their special ornaments awaiting to be set up by their hands only. It would be sacrilege to allow anyone else to take on that job!

Candles are arranged everywhere we can find a safe spot to place them, all of them heavily scented with cinnamon and apple. The house gains not just a festive look but the smell of Christmas is literally in the air!  It is a season of great food only seen during the festive month. One big day of baking last week filled the festive tins full of Christmas sweets – lebkuchen and shortbread and macaroons. The shop-bought lebkuchen is here as well but I hide it in the kitchen until it’s time to make an appearance on the red plate.

Hang on a moment… You don’t know what lebkuchen is? Truly? My goodness, I cannot allow this to continue! Stick with me and let’s remedy that gap in your life you didn’t even know needed filling!

Lebkuchen is literally the cake of life and never have I known something that lives up to its name so well. Lebkuchen is the reason, well one of them, that I put on some very happy weight every time I spend winter in Germany and now it’s my primary source of sustenance every December in Australia. To the as yet uninitiated I describe it as just like gingerbread only without the ginger. It’s a description that tells you nothing about it’s heavenly yet subtle scent of cinnamon and nutmeg or about the soft middle that breaks apart on your tongue or the lingering taste of sweetness that eventually sends you back for just one more piece…

I’m obsessed.

I assemble the ingredients and the team rolls up their sleeves and scrub their fingers ready to knead the dough. We are well-practised in the kitchen and can produce batches of this goodness in the blink of an eye. Mr M has brought in reinforcements with serious baking skills who has only improved the deliciousness of the baking.

Sundays are the lighting of another Advent candle but they are also the day when the whole family tries to be home for a special dinner. As the kids have become more independent their presence in the house at dinnertime is less and less predictable and this year Ian and I have already focused all our Advent energies on the youngest but tallest. He tells me that the novelty of having our undivided attention hasn’t yet worn off… but that he can see it won’t take long! Ian often makes a roast dinner with all the trimmings and there will be dessert, guaranteed. There will be an argument about who gets to light the candles and who gets to snuff them out, also guaranteed. Ah, tradition is also about predictability!

I hope that you are beginning to feel, smell and taste the festive season in your home. Let me send some of my Christmas joy to you in the form of my recipe for lebkuchen. Try it. Savour it. Eat too much of it and dream of hope and love with every mouthful.

Fröhe Weihnachten!

That means “Merry Christmas” (just in case you needed to know…)