Advent Day 19

Happy Advent Season, My Lovelies!  This year on my Advent Calendar I want to share Christmas traditions from around the world along with a daily scripture reading.

I would love to try this fun and *sweet* Welsh tradition:  Taffy-making.

This is how families whiled away the dark hours of Christmas Eve's night, leading up to the Plygain service. Toffee was boiled in pans on open fires and - this is a nice twist - dollops were dropped into icy cold water.

The taffy curled into all sorts of shapes - like letters. This was a way of divining the initials of the younger, unmarried family members' future loves.

In the dark hours on the morning of Christmas Day, before the cockerel crowed, men gathered in rural churches to sing. They sang mainly unaccompanied, three or four part harmony carols in a service that went on for three hours or so. That's Plygain.

This is a tradition which still thrives in parts of mid Wales.

~from the BBC

Colossians 1: 15 - 20
He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For. . . all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross. 


Until next time...
Blessings!
Ricki Jill