“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” ~ Charles Dickens

Just a short post from me today, (and my last of the year). I can hear your “phews”! I am ensconced in Christmas preparations and as things stand at the moment, Santa might well break his neck trying to make his way into my daughters’ bedroom…

Even a burglar would have a challenge making that much mess!

As is the case with Christmas crackers, you normally get a bright but flimsy hat, a corny joke and a completely useless plastic gift, (with the odd surprise), but they are quite fun to pull on when you are completely stuffed and happily inebriated!

50 best Christmas cracker jokes ever

I’d like to thank everyone who has spent their precious time reading any of my posts, and to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I know I say this every year, but it feels like 2014 has gone by in a flash. My kids are that bit taller, savvier, and generally more mature.  Funnily enough, they haven’t yet grown out of their adoration of Father Christmas!

I, on the other hand, feel older and not much wiser, with a rather depleted bank account! Luckily, monetary measures are not the only way to evaluate a year. It has been a tough one for me, but it hasn’t been without its highlights.

I hope 2015 will bring you abundance in every area of your life!

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

This bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

~ William Shakespeare

Hamlet 1.1.163-9, Marcellus to Horatio

It’s time to give thanks for the light in our lives. Our faith, health, family, friends and for the good fortune that has been bestowed upon us, in whatever form we have been blessed in.

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures.” ~ Charles Dickens

I will bid you a festive farewell with a small selection of baroque Christmas music that for me, represents the spirit of love, peace, joy and goodwill to all men:

Ho, ho ho! I better get back to making a path for Santa…