Tag Archives: Christmas

Stir Up Sunday⤴

from

Today is Stir-up Sunday, the day when families gather around stir their homemade Christmas pudding on the last Sunday before advent begins. I made mine yesterday, as it takes seven hours to steam and we take lunch over to my MiL on Sundays. It’s a Mrs Beeton recipe, and fingers crossed it tastes as good as it smells.

Xmas Pudding

Xmas Pudding” flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

Thinking about charms to put into this for a DS106 pudding. Here’s what I’m adding.

  • A coin for creativity
  • A wishbone for inspiration
  • A thimble for remix
  • A ring for connectivity
  • An anchor for community

The Christmas Break?⤴

from

It’s that time of year when many teachers, pupils and parents feel like they are crawling to the festive finish line, eager for a mince-pie-filled break from all things school related. Yet Christmas is a time jam packed with hidden learning opportunities, spanning every curricular area you can shake a figgy pudding at. Moreover, the … Continue reading “The Christmas Break?”

An Advent Calendar in #GlowBlogs⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

I’ve been asked about this sort of thing a few times now and not had an answer. It came to me on Friday, but I couldn’t test it at lunchtime as we had no internet in school.

I’ve played around with the idea this weekend and it works. Of course it could be a lot prettier.

Basically I’ve set up an Advent Calendar where you can click on doors to revel information. You can only see the content that has been published and the info is qued up in Scheduled posts (pages in this case).

Using the Draw Attention and my favourite Display Posts plugins. Here is the Demo: Advent Calendar – An Example Glow Blog for Christmas

Here is a gif.

Christmas 2018⤴

from

Christmas lunch – vege roast and all the trimmings for me, Niall, Niall’s mum and aunt Lesley. Served on mum and dad’s dinner service, reminding me of Christmasses past with family – busy days with everybody piled into mum and dad’s house a surfeit of food, noise and happiness. Today was quieter, but just as happy. Setting the table I felt so lucky for all we have: uur wine glasses were a wedding present from a friend, and the tablecloth was a gift from a student to Niall’s dad. The mats and cutlery were bought with money given to us when we married. So many memories, such good food, and such good company.

Now I am in my study relaxing. I have a new drawing book to inspire me, a new knitting book to tempt me, new pens to draw with, new notepads to write in.

And a cat who thinks it is time for food. She is right.

Schools out for Christmas⤴

from @ Reach

So, another school term has whizzed by. From all of us here, we wish you a wonderful Christmas.

We hope the festive break will give you a chance to celebrate, recharge your batteries and have lots of fun. But we know it’s not an easy time of year for everyone – dealing with family arguments, feeling like everyone else is having a ball when you just feel rubbish…. If you’re struggling this Christmas, remember that Childline are here for you.  And if you have worries about school and think you may need support, our helpline will be back open on 4 January at 9am if you want to get in touch.

 

Looking ahead to next year?

For those of you with exams in January, check out some tips and handy revision tools from SQA here. 

If you’ll be leaving school next year, your school should already have been supporting you to work out what you will do next. Find out how your school can help you get ready for the next big step here. 

 

The post Schools out for Christmas appeared first on Reach.

The ghosts of Christmas Past⤴

from @ blethers

It's a strange phenomenon, the power of Christmas Eve to resurrect memories so strongly and yet so randomly. As I listened to the first of the closing voluntaries from the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's, there came into my mind a memory of myself, in my late teens, stricken with some inconvenient malady on Christmas Eve and spending that short afternoon in bed with the radio on, drifting in and out of sleep. I can't remember what ailed me, and cannot think it lasted, but at the time it felt unreal and solitary as the day darkened.

The small me in the photo (I think I was two) lived in blue dungarees and had to be coaxed out of them for family Christmas tea. (The yellow duck didn't join us - his red felt beak was too chewed for respectable company). We ate Christmas lunch, I remember clearly, in our top flat in Novar Drive, Hyndland, and went for tea to my grandparents' house in Hyndland Road. The whole extended family - the Stewarts, that is - would turn up there at some point in the day, though as I was the first of my generation I was the sole child for the first few post-war years. Families tended to live close, and there was public transport for those who were beyond walking distance.

I was remembering this morning how in my early married life I didn't do any Christmas food: my parents' house was ten minutes' walk from our flat (still in Hyndland) and we went there for lunch and stayed, stupefied, until it was time for bed. My first ever Christmas cake was made just before I had my first child - I'm sure I've recounted how, having slipped on ice in Clarence Drive, I had such a sore behind that I couldn't sit down, and dispelled my fears by baking. But the Glasgow Christmasses didn't end with our emigration to Dunoon; Cal Mac ferries seem to me to have run on Christmas Day and we headed back to Glasgow with our baby son. I do recall, however, that on the first year in Dunoon I iced the cake just before heading out to Midnight Mass: for the first time in my life I was attached to a church and had singing to do.

The long years of running Christmas myself occupied the greatest part of my life, having ended only five or six years ago. It still seems odd not to be making stuffing on Christmas Eve, and ramming it into a recalcitrant bird before church, odd not to waken to the smell of cooking and worry that the overnight temperature had been too high - or too low if the smell wasn't making it as far as the bedroom. There are no small children for whom stockings will have to be filled. I no longer have the restless wait for all the grown-up family to be safely here, nor the unholy rush between the end of term and the 25th. There is, theoretically, all the time in the world.

Time, in fact, to miss family; to look forward to seeing some and regret not seeing others; to have a suitcase packed and worry about taking the right things or forgetting presents or cooking brandy. Time to think about having dinner so that we can have a proper rest before our midnight sing/play/pray (have I got the intercessions? the music?) Time to wonder how we ever had the energy to drag sleeping choristers from their beds to come with us (really).

Now these choristers are cooking turkeys, looking after young children, preparing for visitors, in different parts of the country, and we are here, with the dark firth calm at last and the rain peppering the windows. Everything changes but the message of that distant birth. Even the carols - tonight our introit will be Advent Song, which is only four years old. And then Advent will be over, the waiting over.

And it will be Christmas.

The ghosts of Christmas Past⤴

from @ blethers

It's a strange phenomenon, the power of Christmas Eve to resurrect memories so strongly and yet so randomly. As I listened to the first of the closing voluntaries from the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's, there came into my mind a memory of myself, in my late teens, stricken with some inconvenient malady on Christmas Eve and spending that short afternoon in bed with the radio on, drifting in and out of sleep. I can't remember what ailed me, and cannot think it lasted, but at the time it felt unreal and solitary as the day darkened.

The small me in the photo (I think I was two) lived in blue dungarees and had to be coaxed out of them for family Christmas tea. (The yellow duck didn't join us - his red felt beak was too chewed for respectable company). We ate Christmas lunch, I remember clearly, in our top flat in Novar Drive, Hyndland, and went for tea to my grandparents' house in Hyndland Road. The whole extended family - the Stewarts, that is - would turn up there at some point in the day, though as I was the first of my generation I was the sole child for the first few post-war years. Families tended to live close, and there was public transport for those who were beyond walking distance.

I was remembering this morning how in my early married life I didn't do any Christmas food: my parents' house was ten minutes' walk from our flat (still in Hyndland) and we went there for lunch and stayed, stupefied, until it was time for bed. My first ever Christmas cake was made just before I had my first child - I'm sure I've recounted how, having slipped on ice in Clarence Drive, I had such a sore behind that I couldn't sit down, and dispelled my fears by baking. But the Glasgow Christmasses didn't end with our emigration to Dunoon; Cal Mac ferries seem to me to have run on Christmas Day and we headed back to Glasgow with our baby son. I do recall, however, that on the first year in Dunoon I iced the cake just before heading out to Midnight Mass: for the first time in my life I was attached to a church and had singing to do.

The long years of running Christmas myself occupied the greatest part of my life, having ended only five or six years ago. It still seems odd not to be making stuffing on Christmas Eve, and ramming it into a recalcitrant bird before church, odd not to waken to the smell of cooking and worry that the overnight temperature had been too high - or too low if the smell wasn't making it as far as the bedroom. There are no small children for whom stockings will have to be filled. I no longer have the restless wait for all the grown-up family to be safely here, nor the unholy rush between the end of term and the 25th. There is, theoretically, all the time in the world.

Time, in fact, to miss family; to look forward to seeing some and regret not seeing others; to have a suitcase packed and worry about taking the right things or forgetting presents or cooking brandy. Time to think about having dinner so that we can have a proper rest before our midnight sing/play/pray (have I got the intercessions? the music?) Time to wonder how we ever had the energy to drag sleeping choristers from their beds to come with us (really).

Now these choristers are cooking turkeys, looking after young children, preparing for visitors, in different parts of the country, and we are here, with the dark firth calm at last and the rain peppering the windows. Everything changes but the message of that distant birth. Even the carols - tonight our introit will be Advent Song, which is only four years old. And then Advent will be over, the waiting over.

And it will be Christmas.