First Sunday in Advent

Stir Up Sunday.

Advent. A time of anticipation. I am blessed to be married into a family of Christmas Pudding makers. There is a tradition to it. The same cream stoneware bowls are bought out from the cupboards and the creased, stained and repaired recipe, handed down through generations of the family is used. If there are children in the house they are each encouraged to have a stir of the mixture. Inevitably this is widened to include anyone in the house. The family is widely dispersed now and so to my knowledge this will be done in the same way in both Strathyre and at the north end of Cardigan Bay. Then the sixpenses are bought out – it used to be silver threepenny bits but they became very hard to source – and stirred into the mix. Muslins are tied over the bowls and they are put to steam in the large steaming pots.

Cooled these Christmas Puddings are distributed around the family over the following weeks. Are they the best ever Christmas puddings? I don’t know and really it does not matter. They are a continuity, an ongoing tangible piece of love reaching across time and place.

Catholic Collect for the 1st Sunday in Advent

Stir up thy power, O Lord, and come,
that by thy protection we may be rescued
from the dangers that beset us through our sins;
and be a Redeemer to deliver us;
Who livest and reignest with God the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
ever one God, world without end. Amen.