Today, the first day of 2013, is the seventh day of Christmas, the day one receives “seven swans a-swimmin’”. They are supposed to represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, wonder and awe, right judgement, knowledge, courage, and reverence. Or in Latin, “spiritus sapientiæ et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiæ et pietatis; et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini.” Thanks to Sr. Noella, my Latin teacher a long, long time ago, (shortly after the earth cooled as my friend Michele would say) from 1959 to 1961, I can just make out the meaning of these words!
But I seriously doubt I could get far with Caesar’s little book which begins telling us that Gaul is on the whole divided into three parts.
Today Alice and her family are on the eight hour drive back to Ohio from celebrating the New Year down by the Bay with Em & Co. I’m glad it’s not the weather of day before yesterday or even yesterday. We have a good ten inches of snow around here. Yesterday it snowed all day, invisibly, and in the evening when Andy and drove to Alice’s to check up on the well being of Nathan’s Christmas hamster, Juniper, we saw three single car accidents (in the ditch) on the way over and back, less than five miles. We were very careful!
I want to share a few more photos from Christmas and New Years with our Maryland cohort. One thing they did yesterday was visit the lighthouse park at Piney Point. More of it was open than ever before and they not only were able to play on the beach, but they toured the lighthouse museum, were taken up to the top of the lighthouse, saw the little house where they tell about the U boat which was sunk off Piney Point shortly after WWII. It was captured off the coast of Scotland but brought to the US to be examined because it was invisible to sonar and we wanted to know why. Apparently it was covered with some sort of experimental rubber which achieved this. When the Navy was finished investigating it, they sunk it and now scuba divers can look at it in warmer weather. I hope these facts are reasonably straight! But you can search for more about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-1105
Ingmar and Em use real candles on their tree, but they are only lit for short periods of time and carefully supervised and a fire extinguisher is at hand.
Looking back to Piney Point beach and lighthouse……
Em on the dock………
Fondue supper on Christmas Eve……..
Raclette supper New Years Eve
I will explain more about there two suppers and show you Ingmar’s wonderful Christmas dinner recipe in my next post.
My niece’s boyfriend and I were just discussing those who still use real candles on the Christmas tree. We spoke of them with awe and amazement…perhaps even hushed tones. He described the special candles and the special holders. I described my friend ordering her candles from the home country, which happens to be Germany. So fun! I think it must be a particularly pleasant scene and the smell must also be wonderful as the tree releases more aroma. You’ve had far more snow than we have. It’s all yours and no need to share…truly. I look forward to your discussion of Christmas dishes…
This has nothing to do with anything, but your post showed up on my blogroll as being three years old. I found that so odd I had to zip over.
Here’s another member from the Real Candles Faction
And my home country is Germany, too.
My family were having Raclette on New Year’s Eve as well!
And were they watching Dinner for One?
No, they weren’t, they had my Dad’s cousin and his wife over and just talked the night away
(By the way, I can’t stand “Dinner For One”…)
Great photos! I had no idea about the reason behind seven swans aswimming. Now I want to look up the history behind all the “gifts”!
Happy New Year Kristie.