I know we're pushing it a bit for Christmas things (the three wise men have been and gone, twice) but I wanted to share the wonderful cake Ella made...

I think she did a great job. There are a few more photos here

My biggest regret this Christmas is that it snowed and we never built a snowman - there was a rather tragic afternoon when I took Leona to the shops to buy a sledge and they had all sold out. I am resolved. The next time I see a decent sledge in a shop I will buy three - even if it is June.

If that's the worst I can think of then you know we had a good Christmas and I hope you all did to.

It was very hard to buy Satsumas in the shops this year so when Ella put Satsumas on the shopping list I bought Clementines instead - lot's of Clementines. They were buy one get one free so I bought six bags. That's 30 or so tasty oranges.

When I got home it turned out Ella doesn't like Clementines and I have ruined her Christmas. Personally I think Clementines are far superior to Satsumas but Ella thinks they are disgusting. Eventually I went back to the shops and found some Satumas. These are kept in a seperate bag in the fruit bowl and are for Ella only while me and the girls attempt to eat loads of Clementines before they go off (fortunately, they have lasted quite well).

The important thing is that the girls found a small orange in their stocking. This is an essential part of Christmas - is this the case in other people's families or just ours?

Speaking of the girls, they are now enormous. Baby Joanne is now crawling all over the place and getting in to everything - her favourite toys are electrical outlets, plastic bags and probably barbed wire if she could get hold of it, that girl likes danger. Leona meanwhile is a little person and is definitely not a Baby (she told me), you can hold basic conversations with her and tell her off for not saying please and thank you.

Hope you had a great Christmas, I would tell you about my New Year resolutions but there are too many and I have broken several of them already.

There are loads more Christmassy pictures to be seen here.

I don't know how many of you saw the story of the ugly but safe Christmas tree in Poole...

When is a Christmas tree not a Christmas tree? When it is a giant cone covered in what appears to be green doormats.

Shoppers stared in bemusement at the mysterious object that landed in a shopping precinct in Poole, Dorset, this week. Some compared it to a giant traffic cone, a witch’s hat or a cheap special effect from an early episode of Doctor Who.

The 33ft structure turned out to be their Christmas tree, designed according to the principles of health and safety, circa 2009.

Thus it has no trunk so it won’t blow over, no branches to break off and land on someone’s head, no pine needles to poke a passer-by in the eye, no decorations for drunken teenagers to steal and no angel, presumably because it would need a dangerously long ladder to place it at the top.

[The Times]

Of course, the general public were not impressed. They said things like "I prefer a Christmas tree, not a big wizard’s hat or a lump of astroturf or something that belongs in the roadworks." and "It’s horrible. If you are going to have a fake tree then it ought to resemble a tree. You can get some really good fake trees but this is awful. It doesn’t feel Christmassy at all."

The council stood firm. The tree would definitely be staying and not moving saying: "People think you can just go into the woods, chop down a tree and put it up in the high street but if it blows over and kills someone then somebody is liable"

Fortunately, Vandalism to the rescue...

A Dorset town's much ridiculed fake Christmas tree has been replaced with a traditional conifer.

...

The Dolphin Shopping Centre donated the real tree which was put up on Tuesday morning.

Dorset police are studying town centre CCTV video to see who damaged the artificial tree.

Police said one or more individuals climbed the structure in Falkland Square and damaged its framework between 1700 GMT on 30 November and 0915 the following day. It was taken away for repairs.

[BBC]

A heartwarming tale of Christmas cheer or yet another sign of the rise of the barbarians and the impending fall of civilisation?

You decide...

Personally, I obviously don't condone mindless acts of vandalism but what about non-mindless acts? What about considered, positive (and inclusive of course) constructive acts of ugliness removal?

Maybe there is something to be learned from the thugs of Poole?

I'm just sayin...

One of the more interesting things about having children is the development of Christmas traditions. I'm not talking here about well known traditions like Christmas trees and Nativity sets, I'm talking about family traditions. For example, in the Bogle household they wash the manger.

Now that Leona is old enough to have an idea what is going on we've been making a conscious effort to create a few traditions of our own and one of these is "we always go out for a walk to gather some holly". This year was the first time.

It was a beautiful crisp winters day and we drove to the top of Brantingham hill which is one of my favourite places in the world if only because of all the memories.

I was taken there as a child with the gang from Broomfleet (aunties, uncles, cousins) and we pushed my uncle down the hill in a pram. I was taken there many times on scout hikes including a few night hikes the dark. I was taken there on a Duke of Edinburgh's Award training weekend where there was a girl called Ella that I was very fond of but afraid to say so and I came here today with Ella and our children look for holly.

I only notice now I look at the photos that Leona is wearing the exact same had that Ella wore all those years ago.

The sun was shining through the trees and making everything golden. We walked for a little while, Leona stopping as she does to examine everything including a molehill to which she pointed and said "poop" (an easy mistake to make). Eventually it happened that I stopped the pram to take a photo while Ella and Leona walked a little way ahead until Ella stopped and looked around. "Oh, very good daddy!" Ella said (calling me daddy 'cause thats what you do when toddlers are around), she thought I had stopped because of the holly bush I was stood next to (that they had walked right past) when actually I hadn't seen it either.

Mummy clipped some holly branches (no berries anywhere) and passed them to Leona who was very well gloved up (health and safety). Leona put them in big bucket we brought with us while daddy looked up and down the path nervously wondering if somebody might come along and tell us off for stealing holly.

We were careful not to take too much holly from any given bush and moved from bush to bush until eventually we had ample holly for our needs. Ella took a little more because it's always best to be safe, then we headed back to the car - but not until we'd played a little hide and seek.

On the way home we stopped for fuel and idiot daddy accidentally bought premium expensive fuel (the pumps were badly marked) which was 15p a litre more expensive but he was cheered up when we passed one of those farmhouses where they sell veg outside with an honesty box and discovered that not only do Brussels Sprouts grow on freaky alien sticks but that he could buy one for only £1.20! Despite the influence of popular culture, I actually quite like Brussel Sprouts!

When we got home mummy used green wire to tie the holly branches all around the house giving it a slight hint of the festivities to come without actually constituting decorations (not shiny, no lights) and spoiling Advent. There will be no real decorations going up until much nearer to Christmas day.

All in all we had a good time and I think Leona did too so we will definitely be doing it again next year.

I'm fairly sure I first heard this criticism from the lips of Fr Fun a few years ago but I've heard it a few times since and now the Bishop of Croydon Nick Baines (Anglican - so he's no more a Bishop than I am) asks of Away in a Manger...

"I always find it a slightly bizarre sight when I see parents and grandparents at a nativity play singing Away in a Manger as if it actually related to reality. I can understand the little children being quite taken with the sort of baby of whom it can be said 'no crying he makes', but how can any adult sing this without embarrassment? I think there are two problems here: first, it is normal for babies to cry and there is probably something wrong if they don't; secondly, are we really to believe that a crying baby Jesus should be somehow theologically problematic? Or, to put it more bluntly, is crying supposed to be sinful?"

[link]

What a moron.

It is normal for babies to cry but it is also normal for them not to cry. Babies do not spend their every waking hour crying and sometimes they simply lay there looking around and gurgling gently.

What the carol doesn't say is "this baby never cries ever" and what it definitely doesn't say is "because a crying baby Jesus wold be theologically problematic because crying is sinful." The song sets a scene: The cattle are lowing (whatever that means), the baby awakes and he doesn't cry.

I've been there, I've been a parent with a baby which simply woke up and looked around. It's a nice intimate moment and it's a nice thought that maybe Mary and Joseph had such a moment with the baby Jesus and it's not entirely unlikely. Neither of my children are God (I would have noticed) and it's happened to me a few times. No doubt there were other not so serence moments but the author of the carol chooses not to evoke them at this time. It's not a biography.

Now if all the miserable gits who can't even make up original criticisms would please naff off that would be lovely.

[picture source]

Today is the feast day of St Nicholas. He was a Bishop in the fourth centuary, know as a patron saint of children. He helped three girls to get married by providing their wedding dowery. He was there at the Council of Nicea and James likes him becuase he punched Arius!

In Europe (but not England) there is a tradition where children put their shoes outside the door so that the next morning on the feast of St Nicholas they can find that St Nicholas has been and put coins in them. In England Saint Nicholas or Santa comes on Christmas Eve and fills childrens stockings and we thought it would be confusing for the girls if Saint Nicholas visited twice!

So I came up with an idea that Saint Nicholas would throws bags of coins down the chimney on his feast day and give gifts in celebration of the birth of our Lord on Christmas Eve.

This year when he threw the bag of coins down the chimey it burst and the coins scattered round the room so the children (Leona and James) had to find all the coins :o) They had bounced in to all sorts of interesting hiding places and it took Leona a while to find all of hers... it too James even longer.

We decided not to try and compete with Mark and Monica's Nativity Scene this year. We don't have a horde of little nativity figures and we were not really sure where to acquire suitable moss in West Hull.

Something we were able to acquire in West Hull was fruit, brandy, icing sugar and ludicrous quantities of marzipan (four packs). So Ella has baked a rather spectacular Christmas cake and topped it with rather spectacular snowmen...

The four snowmen are singing from liquorice all sorts hymn books on which Ella has iced musical notes - each of the snowmen has a different part (base, tenor, alto and soprano) and Ella has been careful to make sure each page has the same number of beats and the appropriate clef.

She is a Christmas cake making musical nerd.

She also made use of a clever sparky-frosting technique that she learned from a kind lady in the cake shop on Boothferry Road (Ella assures me she was there to buy glycerine for the peaked icing and not to buy the cake). You can sort of see it in this photo below...

It looks spectacularly good. But as Ella said - the proof will be in the eating...

If you enjoy Christmas Trees and Puzzle Games you could do worse than play this Christmas Tree Puzzle Game!

If you enjoy totally bizarre games with no Christmas connection at all (except that James was playing it in Advent) then you could try this Wierd Moon Game!

So, another year another Christmas concert at St. Mary's College. Every year I go along to hear Ella in the Senior Choir...

The Junior Choir were excellent in their rendition of "Carol of the Children" by Rutter. The String Quartet, Flute Choir, String Orchestra and Orchestra were all well rehersed, professional and a delight to listen to. There were some great groups of kids who had done slightly different things... The folk group were superb (and nothing like the crap you get at folk masses). Red Banshee were also very good (again, superior to what you expect when you place an electric guitar in a teenagers hands) - Leona was loving the Red Banshee (loud and red = great). Speaking of thing's Leona loved, the dancing. There were two sets of dancers and both were very well coordinated (considering the huge number of girls on stage).

The senior Choir were very good (Full Disclosure: I'm married to one of them) and I can't not mention the guy on the guitar with his own composition "Oriental Cityscape" and the girl who played with him. She sang a beautiful lullaby which Leona hated because she could tell it was supposed to put her to sleep and she hates sleep. In fact, there were several student made compositions which were all superb. While I expect the sudden ability of students to compose music is largely due to the availability of software like sebelius (photoshop for music) this does nothing to detract from the skill with which they evoke various feeling and emotion. After all, the guy who wrote "Christmas Soon!" probably had sebelius too.

So, congratulations to all involved. Well done.

A gripe? Oh James, tell us it isn't so! Every year I moan about the secularisation of it all. Kid's these days... or is it the grownups? Either way, I didn't hear many carols... perhaps that's not what Christmas concerts are about. Anyway, that's the only criticism: less God than I would have liked.