Joy. Just the shape of this word sees me realise its purpose in the world! I think of song and sunshine and that bubbly feeling inside that is indescribable by any word other than itself. I love all of the joy word family – joyous, joy bells and joyful just spread the wonder further. I have found joy this week in Advent beads, in a piece of lebkuchen with my morning cuppa (ok, two pieces. Sometimes three. It’s Christmas!). The first end of year celebrations with friends have been joyous. The Christmas carols playing everywhere I go are joyful and Christmas lights are every possible permutation of joy you can imagine!
Joy, the third Advent candle.
This week my focus is on the more commercial side of the festive season. Gift giving is a key part of the Christmas celebration here as it is in so many other households. There have been years of plenty and years of less but always there will be a Santa sack. I am on the lookout all year for the special presents for family and friends. Every few months I pull down those boxes and search through them to see what I have collected and what more is needed. It’s such a relief to open them in December and realise that most of the shopping has already been done and all that’s left to do is turn them into prettily wrapped parcels ready to place under the tree. Well, it would be if I had done that. It seems this will be one of those years where I join the horror that is Christmas shopping crowds.
There will be cans of soft drink and lollies in those stockings. These entered the sacks in the years when the eldest was beginning to question the wizardry behind the magic of Christmas. The look of horror on my face when he pulled out two cans of coke and a huge lollipop were enough to answer his questions and confirm his belief for a few years longer. No way would his mum have given him such banned treats, it has to be Santa! Some stationery, a notebook and a pen. Socks and jocks, the comedy addition to the package. There used to always be Lego but Santa had a serious discussion with me and agreed that there is already plenty of that available in the house and more was not going to add to the joy of it.
You know me pretty well by now so you won’t be surprised to find that there will always be books in those bags. The family have not really picked up the reading habit ( I KNOW! Where did they come from???) but I cannot bring myself to omit that crucial gift. One year I included a makeup palette in book form (talk about compromise!) for Ms G and I’ve regretted it ever since. Not because of the makeup (she looked beautiful!) but because she had no book to (not) read and somehow that lessened my own joy in the occasion. Giving books gives ME joy, and gift giving is a joy that can share its glory with both giver and recipient.
Over the years I have become more and more horrified by the incredible amount of waste associated with what had become the Christmas excess. There were bags of paper and packaging to be disposed of. Crappy sweets that didn’t even taste good that had come in packages along with ridiculous plastic toys that filled a space in a package but were unappreciated, unwanted, unnoticed even. Space in our bank accounts that were even harder to refill! I stood and surveyed the scene of my very favourite celebration and was aware only of disappointment. That is not the sensation I want to experience on Christmas Day! And so began the exercise of reducing waste and increasing the value of the gifts we give. The most impactful of these was when we began making our own Christmas bon bons.
Why I do these things to myself I really do not know…
No more bad jokes and no more tacky toys and definitely no more Christmas hats that do not fit my head! My goal was to create a Christmas cracker that could sit on the table for each person at lunch containing a meaningful gift for each person. It had to fit in the cylinder, be useful, leave room for really good chocolate or lollies and allow us to include a ridiculous Christmas joke. No more tacky toys and definitely no more Christmas hats that do not fit my head! The search for lovely, good quality items that fit in the small package and will have utility for each person has become a year long activity for me. Some of the things that have met the criteria and been brilliant inclusions are:
- multitools and torches
- perfume and aftershave lotion and moisturisers
- pens and ink (of course, just in mine!!)
- keyrings
- USB devices and battery packs
- makeup (lip balms and things in tubes are perfect)
- seeds to grow!
One year my sisters and mum collaborated with me and the crackers became a family affair. They added gift vouchers and games and jewellery and the thrill of watching those bon dons cracked was shared even further. Sadly, like chocolate in the Advent calendar, this practice has only become an addition rather than replacing the issue it was intended to solve. I think I need fellow pilgrims on the path to ‘less’, it’s impossible to drive this particular change alone it seems!
This year I’ve got… well, it’s a secret until those crackers are popped open on December 25! OK, I can give away one thing – there are no crackers to pop. I’ve let things get too big yet again. My excuse began with not being able to put explosives in the mail. Truly, Christmas snaps contain gunpowder! With Ms G and Mr T ‘up north’ with ‘the other half’ of the family it seemed a waste to create those lovelies and not be able to send them. Then I realised I wasn’t limited to the size and shape of the cardboard tube. And then (you can see where this is going…) I found the perfect vessels to hold the goodies. And then they became large and unwieldy and finding just the right shaped box to ferry them from here to there took me ages. And then I got ready to mail the completed box of festive fun. I left it ready on the floor (again, what follows is completely predictable). I woke up one morning last week to the news that one of the curly creatures in our home had found his way into the lounge and dug through the box to enjoy the candy canes hidden deep within.
I’m starting afresh. No poppers, no lollies and certainly no access for greedy puppy dogs!!
It’s curious, when you think of it, that even as society becomes more secular we have continued with the tradition of gift giving. Well, perhaps it’s completely predictable, for along with secularisation we have become increasingly more driven by ‘stuff’. That said, the more I mused on this one the more I wondered about why we did it in the first place. Some tell of the original gifts brought to the baby in the manger by the three wise men and that we honour that beautiful pilgrimage when we give presents. I’ve heard tales of Boxing Day and gifts for the staff of the great houses from the Lords and Ladies to thank them for their work on Christmas Day. I adore the story behind one of my favourite Christmas Carols, Good King Wenceslaus, and when I sing those beautiful words I picture traipsing through the snow in the deep footprints made by the boots of that generous leader as he made his way to bring warmth and succour to the poor. My dear sister in her role as a leader in her faith continues this tradition every year, ensuring Christmas can be celebrated by all by filling hundreds of tubs with the ingredients of joy in the shape of food and drink and treats for those in her community who need support with the spirit of Christmas.
So I did a little research (ie Googling). I found this site really great at summarising the progress of tradition with historical social, religious and economic factors all playing their part to create the traditions of Christmas we know and I love so much today.
Choosing the right gift was important and depended on your social status and position. Token gifts of low value were a measure of the high esteem you had for a friend, whereas expensive gifts were a sign you were trying too hard…
Perhaps a reflection of how well you know someone and what might make them happy???
Gift Giving – it’s Pagan!
Saturnalia, the most popular holiday of the ancient Roman calendar, drew inspiration from these earlier farming-related rituals of midwinter and the winter solstice. Beginning on the 17 December and running through to the 23rd, it was a time for partying, feasting and private gift-giving, and when social norms were overturned.
During this time of revelry, gambling was allowed, work was put to one side, and masters waited on their servants. People exchanged joke gifts or small figurines made of wax or pottery known as Sigillaria. In his poems on the Saturnalia, the Romen poet Martial describes mostly inexpensive gifts such as writing tablets, dice cups, lamps, combs and toothpicks noting that these were more in the spirit of the season.
Gift Giving – the Roman way
Gift-giving started long before Christmas was set as a day to remember Christ’s birth. While Christmas became a tradition in the fourth century, gift-giving during holidays is of Roman origin. It was part of a celebration offered to the Roman god Saturn who was viewed to be the god of agriculture who gave vegetation and fruitfulness all year round.
The celebration lasted for seven days through the 17th to the 23rd of December. The gift giving ceremonies were seen as a way of gaining fortune for the next year. People initially gave simple gifts like candles, cheap wines, fruits, nuts and the like.
It’s a curious thing to look at such traditions and think back to how they began. This is ‘the way we do it’ for Christmas and each of these special pieces are based in a version of something we just appropriated from traditions elsewhere for our own use. Growing up in the communities we did means we have really only been exposed to the practices of a Western, Christian Christmas tradition. My German Christmas experiences just gave them shape and taste and smell even though, at the time I took them on as my own, I had no idea of the meaning behind any of the rituals. I went along with each new thing with eyes open wide and drank in every new experience with fascination. Over time those rituals have become layered in meaning and our family history and found a place as key chapters in the story of our lives.
Ritual and celebration are, as Liz Gilbert so beautifully captures, a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy and so many other human emotions.
As time passed and the babies grew up I anticipated they would also grow away from these celebrations and begin looking outwards to other more enticing temptations. Instead I’ve seen them look to these family traditions as places of stability. They are the ones who hint that the Advent beads need to be prepared. Mr M willingly dons an apron to join the lebkuchen baking day, kneading the dough is his speciality and he guards it ferociously. Their lovely friends have been brought into the fold to become a part of the fun and the table has become only fuller over time.
When we lived away from both families we would alternate between visits north, visits south, then a year at home. Since being in Bendigo we tried for a while to continue that practice. Teenage summer jobs and sports and work demands put a stop to travelling for a while (as did the ‘C***d’ years). Over the last few years I have been thrilled to host our family Christmas Day celebrations here, a dream come true. Ardley was built to be a place of community and, hermits that we are, she rarely gets to flex that talent. Christmas is the only time we really allow her to blossom into her full glory. What better time? As the kids begin to fan out across the country and become integral parts of the lives of other families we will continue to love Christmas at home and all comers will be welcome to join us at the table. This year, however, that table will be out at my sister’s farm where all the family and food and festivities will be joyously shared. Lesson – the joy is mobile and can be found wherever the precious people are!
That’s how December, the festive season, will look here at Ardley. If you drop in there will be lebkuchen and cookies to share. The sun catchers already look so pretty and I can’t wait to see how the new ones grow each day. Just be prepared to sing. My current favourite is Deborah Conway singing He’s too fat for the chimney. You’ve seen the festive flue, he will need to be quite trim to have any hope of getting in that way!
Celebration and inspiration in one!
I’d love to hear about how you celebrate Christmas (or the summer solstice of Hannukah or any other important time of year that draws a line in the calendar of your life). Leave a comment and share your joy. There’s always so much more to go around.
Things I’ve learned about celebrating Christmas that I will share with you for free.
- It is still possible to mail Christmas cards to those you know and love and it’s blissful to receive them.
- Carols on Christmas Eve are mandatory and you can’t go to bed until after Santa has appeared on his sleigh to let you know he is ‘on his way’.
- There is never too much food on Christmas Day.
- There can be not to many bottles of bubbly on Christmas Day.
- Chocolate is an acceptable breakfast food. So is lebkuchen!
- Boxing Day, no matter what it was named for, is for introspection and reading. Hours curled up with a book (or two, or more). Trust me.
Obviously I’ve been deep in my joy in the festive season and have dragged you all along (willingly or not!) with me. For those of you who are wondering how much more of this, know that I am disciplined about Christmas being the month of December and no longer. For those who are enjoying the ride, know that December will be back again in less than a year!
I love the photo of the suncatchers. I have to admit that the Festive Flue is a quirky adaptation this year!
It’s so hard to actually capture the suncatchers in a photo. They always seem dull in comparison to their real life selves that sparkle. And, yes, the Festive Flue is making itself known!!!
Christmas is a time for gratitude for me. I literally feel the love of the sun; the cheer; and most importantly share quality time with my family and friends. My gratitude for having a warm safe home which can be shared with family and friends alongside the opportunity to show/tell people of my love for them is what make my Christmas time special. I just can’t get enough. I also love creating an environment that “over the top” Christmas to bring a little awe to the time. My husband has made comments on many occasions that our home looks like it has more Christmas trees than a Myer window and he could be right!!!
It is so good to remind ourselves to be grateful for the blessings of Christmas. It’s easy to be lost in the tinsel and shopping and the food (oh, the food!) when it is perfectly set up for us to stop and remember how lucky we are to enjoy the Christmas we get to have with our families and friends. Thanks for reminding me. I’m going to go hug a child and sing. Joy to the World!🎶
I am enjoying all the Christmas spirit right along with you! Usually, the tree is up by 1 December, but with a house move coming up in a weeks’ time I really didn’t have it in me to put it up twice! so we are making do with an array Christmas elves and small trees around the house.
We inducted the number one child into the responsibility of creating the Christmas wizardry a year or so ago, and its so lovely to see him embrace the responsibility for his sibling and cousins.
For us the big day is Boxing Day, all the family join us and the “crafty” sister creates the home made bons-bons – in recent years we have a two-tiered plan – the adults get a small bottle of gin inside theirs! They fit perfectly! So looking foward to enjoying it all – just need to get the house move sorted first:)
It’s a space in the Christmas tradition we don’t celebrate enough, bringing the children into the wizardry (perfect word!) and sharing that joy with them. We never had the elves visit. I think looking after them as well as the rest might have tipped me over the edge… I love that you also have home made bon bons. We did scotch one year, I’m thinking gin might have been far better received! (Just don’t open them over a hard floor…)🥂
Good luck with the move!!!
All of the gifts given by those historical examples would have been extremely useful and practical. I don’t know if I agree with the concept of cheaper = more love… I think gifts should always be thoughtful and useful and loving!
You’re right. It’s not a direct relationship where ‘cheap’ = ‘love’. I think that the message this is trying to share is that the thoughtful gifts that show you know and care for someone’s happiness don’t always cost much. In contrast, spending a lot of money on a gift that isn’t necessarily targeted to a person potentially demonstrates the opposite. One year I received over 4 metres of mulch for the garden, a huge pile of dirt deposited in the front yard. It brought tears to my eyes not due to the mess but because it was EXACTLY what I wanted! I believe that the pleasure in gift giving is in the presentation of recognition and care. “I know you. I care about you. I want to show you that by giving you this thing that I know means something to you”.
Have fun finding presents for those you love!!!