Category: Advent

I spent this morning in the high school, soaking up the excitement and energy of the kids on the last day of term.   I was there for a whole school assembly — a first, and a brave move by a new head whose last school was somewhat more sedate.

The kids were great, not least those in the drama group who had prepared an alternative nativity skit on very short notice.  (Mary and Joseph on the streets, car broken down; taken in by a homeless man and cared for by a prostitute.  You know the sort of thing…)

Yes, the boy in front of me was behaving less than well as the choir sang; but for anyone with eyes, it was clear that he was desperate to get up there and sing with them, but just didn’t have the nerve.  Yes, they kept applauding at all the wrong moments and ignored the head teacher’s request not to, but I was not in charge and didn’t need to let it bother me.

The skit went well, and I had the good luck to come next:  God-slot, just as the meaning had begun to sink in.   For a moment silence fell, and I had several hundred teenagers hanging on my every word.   There’s magic in that moment, when so many restless kids forget themselves for long enough to listen.

Then the choir came back, the tension broke, and the normal raucous laughter of teenagers resumed.

It was a good day.

And perhaps when we do our next whole school assembly in Lent, I’ll talk about how I learned to forgive them for planting the new and horrid version of Hallelujah so firmly in my head that neither Maddy Prior nor the Office Hymn have come close to dislodging it.

Alleluia, alleluia…

Behold, the most expensive cookies in the world.

Every year when I was little, I would watch Dad make the Christmas Hermits.  Even as a child I did much of the baking, but Hermits were Dad’s thing.  His mother’s recipe, and probably her mother’s before that.  Too heavy a mix for little arms, though just perfect for little hands to roll into a ball and flatten with the bottom of a glass.

And every three or four years, Dad has a fit of Christmas madness and makes the Hermits, knowing that Hershe will not let him eat very many of them.  He makes them,  eats a few, then sends the rest across the Atlantic to me.

Hard to know who is happiest:  me or the post master general.

Molly seems to like them too.

When I was a child, I loved opening my Advent calendar each day.  There it sat, a wonderfully rich and intricate picture, with numbers well hidden in the folds of Mary’s skirt or the arch of an angel’s wing.  Once I found the day’s window, I would prise it open ever so carefully, so as not to loose a bit of the glitter and gilt, and then I would peer at the tiny new picture inside.

Now, I’m as fond of chocolate as the next person, but modern Advent calendars with their daily dose of dairymilk simply do not compare to the glittery memories of childhood.  So I found myself wondering:  what does my goddaughter make of her ‘High School Musical’ Advent calendar.  Any disappointment I felt on seeing the cardboard box printed with a not-very-exciting photo had to be held in check by the knowledge that I had failed to send her an Advent calendar myself — and the equally lamentable sense that I dare not send her an Advent calendar for fear that the sort of Advent calendar I would choose would not interest her at all.

I spent a few days ignoring the calendar:  aware of her daily journey for chocolate, not wanting to intervene.

I paid more attention to her letter to Santa, which had some modest (and not so modest) requests, and then a curious promise to leave Santa a five pound note.  I didn’t understand, and I didn’t find the chance to ask, till her mother explained that god-daughter was adamant that the £5 note in her piggy bank not be touched:  she wanted to give it to Santa so that he could get presents for the children who were poor.

She came up with this on her own, and is sticking by it.

So it made me think again:  what does a High School Musical calendar mean to a seven year old?  It would easy to assume that she is a victim of commercialism and chocolate-bribery.  But I doubt it.  She is too smart for that.  So perhaps it is about dreams:  Gabriella as role model, singing her way into happiness as she refuses to be boxed in by her intelligence and other people’s expectations of her.  Hopes and dreams and visions about the start of a new way of life.

I’m glad that her mother knows better than I do and got her a calendar that would speak the truth of Christmas.