Traditions

One of the advantages of living in another country is that you can acquire new traditions while continuing to observe those of your own that you enjoy.  November already blessed with two of my favorite traditions - bonfire night on November 5th and Thanksgiving on, er, the last Thursday in the month - now brings a new one, the start of Christmas Fair season.

A Christmas Fair is essentially a flea market with mulled wine.  It's a forum for the locals to shed the detritus - used toys, old china, ruined books and so forth - that accumulates over the year, and it's an excuse for the adults to get together for a few glasses of Christmas cheer.  It's delicious, the transition from November's immutable grey into the warm yellow light of a church hall, sloughing off frozen layers and unwinding a damp scarf, the exchange of good-natured insults with the fathers of your children's friends.

The Christmas Fair is the perfect way to bring out the festive spirit that has eluded me in recent years.  It's simple, homey, and about as un-commercial as you can get.  There's no shortage of ways to spend your money, but you're generally forking over 10 or 20p at a time, not ten and twenty pound notes, and you get mince pies and bits of candy for your hard-earned dosh.  Santa visits and distributes largesse to the children, good and otherwise.  The lady manning the toy stall let our children have a few extra things even though they didn't have the cash.  There was a tombola, a raffle and a cake stall.  It was a perfect way to spend the short November afternoon.

And now that the fireworks have died down, most of the Thanksgiving turkey is gone and the last vestiges of pumpkin pie scrubbed from the carpet, I'm finally ready for Christmas.