Crism!

Amongst the many other Christmas traditions I have, I can now add the writing of a blog post entitled 'Crism', which I seem to have done for the last three years.

December 1st is, for me, the cold start to Christmas. There's no warming up beforehand, it all starts today. Decorations, Christmas music, mulled wine, and the wearing of a Christmassy jumper.

This year, I decided to have a few friends 'round to kick off the festive season. The Minx did an excellent job of festooning the house with holly from the garden (or, more accurately, the neighbour's garden. But the tree does come over into ours) and made a batch of mince pies using her homemade mincemeat. My contribution was the rustling up of the mulled wine and tidying the living room, i.e. moving loads of stuff upstairs.  

And what a lovely evening we had: just the right number of people, some lovely food and drink, and plenty of chat in front of the fire (although, actually, we had to open a window to let some warmth out!). I really hope the rest of the Christmas period is just like this.