Deck The Halls.

It is Christmas time and in England the tradition is to decorate our houses with evergreen leaves. This follows a pagan tradition going back to pre-Christian times and was then adopted, along with others, into Christian practice. Nowadays everybody does it regardless of their religious persuasion, which is good.

The old song goes “deck the halls with boughs of holly” but our house really isn’t big enough for boughs so we use ivy instead; after all another carol sings of “the holly and the ivy” so it is traditional. Maude and I went scrumping this afternoon and I came back with some nice long strands stuffed up my jumper, so the picture is ivy.

22 December 2014