Stir up Sunday

This Sunday , the last before Advent is  known as Stir up Sunday and is traditionally the day to make the Christmas pudding.The name comes from the collect for day in the Common Book of Prayer -

Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that they bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by you be richly rewarded: through Jesus Christ Our Lord. 

Amen

I did a bit of reading and found out that:

•  your pudding should be stirred from east to west to remember the journey taken by the wise men 
•  should  have 13 ingredients to remember Christ and the disciples.

And , of course, it  should contain a sixpence bringing good luck to the finder!  My grandmother always put a sixpence in her's, I think nowadays it's a fifty pence piece!

I was surprised to see how many newspapers and food blogs, including my favourite one were running articles with plenty of pudding and cake recipes in time for this weekend. It seems that this tradition is still popular. We make a home made pudding in our family - my sister has made it this year but I thought I would put a non traditional one in the freezer for a another occasion. This weekend I will make my Christmas cake , the fruit is ready soaking and today I made homemade mincemeat.

Advent - the wreath.

Advent is my most favourite time of year. As November draws to a  close child like excitement effervesces quietly inside me as I plan and pray my way towards Christmas. This year my pleasure is  enhanced by the joy of being 'home' - it is winter, and it is dark as we light our Advent candles , the symbolism of light dawning gradually in a dark world is strong after years of summer and tropical Christmases. 

The Advent wreath is the focus of our celebrations. A simple ring of greenery symbolising the completness of God and renewal of our life in Christ and the utimate renewal we look for in his second coming. The four candles - three purple and one pink represent hope, peace, joy ( the pink one) and love. Another way of naming the  candles is the patriarchs, the prophets, John the Baptist and Mary , the mother of Jesus. We light our candles on Sunday evening and pray using a family litany from the Upper Room website. The litany that we use is from 2008 and when I tried to find the link I was unable to, maybe it no longer exsists. The link given takes you to the 2011 litany.

This year we did not place a fifth candle in the centre of our ring.We are going to decorate our Christ candle this year: I plan to buy a simple white pillar candle and have the children carve and paint their own designs on it. In the busyness of end of term events, scout visits to the panto, school christmas discos etc. etc. I hope that this will be a quietly  meditative activity to keep us centred on what is real. 

Ah well, I can but try!