Promoting Education, Health and Enterprise in a Maasai Community
Advent Eve, and the time to make the wreath for your door or table. Because we were in our second pandemic lockdown we could not get the usual supply of pine cuttings. So, together with three families in our street, Charlotte ran a zoom workshop. We managed to get some straw delivered together with wire, ribbon, pepper biscuits and gløgg. All was set for the workshop. A real Hygge occasion.
And now they are adorning Searle St.
Why do we make wreaths and what is so special about the Scandinavian way? The Why, goes back into recorded history and beyond. Gathering together evergreen leaves and binding them into shapes probably represents the need to express the hope of the return of the warm sun in the summer to come. The further north our ancestors moved the greater the contrast between the warmth and fertility of the spring and summer and the dark depths of winter; and the greater the need to look forward and to create symbols and traditions to mark the turning of the year. Thus, perhaps, the Scandinavian links.
Advent wreaths as a part of the Christian Festival were introduced by Lutheran Church in Germany in the 16th Century.
More recently Scandinavians and other Northern Europeans moved in large numbers to the New World of America and nothing brings on tradition more than being away from home.
Today Scandinavia is known for design and the appreciation of beauty sometimes above functionality. And so, there are Swedish straw wreaths, and reindeer and hearts. The Norwegian furry fir wreaths that have a touch of a Catherine wheel, and the well organised Danish version using the Swedish foundation and tidying up the Norwegian fir circle. There is no great depth of research to these statements, just observation of life, imagination and Google searches. The truth is they are much the same in terms of ingredients and construction.
Sadly we could not make our usual noisy mess in St Giles, but next year we certainly hope and pray that we can have our usual crowd and raise the usual large sum of many towards our College start-up grants.
