ADVENT is the wonderful season of preparation. Of course, when you are so busy (and aren’t we all), it seems absurd to take up still more time, when you can generally buy anything you want or need. But it has a strange logic of its own. Anyone can do it, and that is the whole point: you have to do it, only that.

Making Christmas puddings may take time, but it is not difficult. It is rather satisfying writing out the list, buying the ingredients (no one shop will have them all), measuring, chopping, slicing, squeezing, mixing and long, slow cooking for hours. It all takes time and patience.

My recipe comes from my grandmother, and I like to think (she died before I thought to ask her) that she might have got it from her grandmother. It was one of the happier duties of the month of November, with its darkening days and obligations of remembrance. And now there are mince pies. And then there is…

Certainly, there is plenty to do. There are plenty of things to prepare: not buy, but prepare. Advent is a lovely season, for this is its purpose – preparation. Preparation for our own death, of course, and the coming of the Lord in judgement, but also, more immediately, preparing for the joyful season of Christmas – simple practical tasks that demand discipline and planning, but which bring their own rewards in progress made and work done. Great long lists getting slowly ticked off.

They are forms of work that make a good pattern of prayer; satisfyingly the same as earlier years and, God spare, the same as in years to come. Have a happy Advent. It will all come gloriously into its own on Christmas Day.

Canon Ann Turner

Rural Dean of Skipton