Rosie’s Ramblings – Winter 2024/25

Rosie’s Ramblings – Winter 2024

Welcome to this edition of the Trowse Villager quarterly magazine.

Winter draws on! As I type this, I can see snow covering the grass outside, and ice covering the windscreen of my car – uurgh! Ah well, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? Encouraging words from the poet Shelley. Winter is not my favourite season and I sometimes wish I could just hibernate. Yesterday we actually changed our summer curtains in the living room, and hung up our winter ones. Yes – we are the kind of posh people who have different curtains for summer and winter! I have to say, the living room now feels much cosier, and there is something nice about closing the curtains when it's getting dark, and snuggling up with a good book – which makes it obvious my enjoyment of winter is more about shutting it out than getting out into the frost and the cold!

I recently read a wonderful book “Winters in the World” by Eleanor Parker, all about the Anglo-Saxon year. Possibly because winter was so harsh in those times and quite difficult to survive, people would give their age by saying they had lived so many “winters in the world.” I suppose I should be grateful that we’re not in Narnia where it’s “always winter but never Christmas,” but in Trowse where it will be Christmas, but not yet! We’ve yet to come to the darkest days of the year, and besides Christmas itself, these next three months include two of my favourite seasons of the Church year – Advent and Epiphany.

This past year has seemed quite dark, both because of the terrible events happening in our world on a political and environmental level, and for me personally. I have lost several dear friends and conducted a record number of funerals – more than twice as many as usual. Quite honestly, I will be glad when this year is over and we can look forward to a hopefully brighter future. And I don’t have to wait long!

The Church year starts on Advent Sunday, 1st December. This is when we begin to look forward to the coming of Christ. We have an Advent wreath in church, with four candles in a ring and one in the middle. Each Sunday we light one more candle to symbolise Christ, the light of the world, getting closer and closer and then, at our Midnight in Bethlehem service at 9.30 on Christmas Eve, we light the middle one to celebrate the arrival of the light with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

Come to our “Advent Service of Light” at 3pm on 1st December, and sing some wonderful Advent carols, including the lovely “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”

There is no reason to think that Jesus was born in the middle of winter, but at this bleakest, darkest time of year, there was clearly a need for a midwinter festival to dispel the gloom, and the Anglo-Saxons must surely have had such a festival before their conversion to Christianity. It seems entirely appropriate that the birth of Christ is celebrated in midwinter at the solstice when the sun’s light is reborn, because Christ is the source of light itself. Our Christmas services are listed on the “What’s On” page – come and celebrate the birth of Christ with us.

Last, but by no means least, Epiphany is on 6th January, and on Sunday 5th January at 3pm, we have a special service when we celebrate the coming of the Magi, (the Wise Men, or the Three Kings) and sing my very favourite hymn of all – “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning.”

As always, a warm welcome awaits you at St. Andrew’s Church at all our services and events. I hope you will join us for some (or all!) of them, and wish you and yours a joyful and peaceful Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.