‘‘Twas the Night before Christmas…

A busy day, doing last minute preparations. I fixed our main meal mid-afternoon, as Roger and I needed to be at church to rehearse with the choir at 6.30, and before that, Roger, Philip and Laura needed to prepare our luminaries to line the front edge of our grass, and either side of the driveway. This is a neighbourhood tradition which is now in its 34th year! We put in an order for the number of candles and bags we want, and they get delivered a few days before Christmas. We had 50 bags, which needed to be opened up, the tops folded over to give them a bit of strength, a few inches of sand put in, then a candle placed in each one. So it’s quite a production line. One of Laura’s friends came by to say goodbye, and she volunteered to help. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a photo showing both sides of the driveway, since with four cars at home at the moment, two of them were on the driveway! I’ve added an extra, showing the street in one direction from our house. We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Eve service at church, with a wonderful selection of music, including a choral medley sung by Eric, our young African American choral scholar with a wonderful baritone voice, two items by the Praise band, two from the choir (including us), and a beautiful cello piece by Tom, in two parts, one pre-recorded on his laptop, and the other playing live! Tom is a multi talented guy, being our pianist and organist, but the cello really being his principal instrument! Then of course there were congregation carols as well. Unfortunately, by the time we got home about 8.30, many of the candles in the luminaries had gone out. Whilst there was a bit of a breeze blowing which wouldn’t have helped, I think part of the problem is the quality of the candles they purchase, which seem to have deteriorated over the years, as in our earlier years year, I remember sometimes looking out of the window at about 2am and some would still be burning. Roger did go out and relight some of them, but I would guess some people had gone out for the evening, and so theirs remained out, so we didn’t get the full effect along the street. Of course, not everyone chooses to do it, and some people are away,