PRIEST's LETTER

As we move towards the end of the Church and calendar years and the days grow shorter, we all crave a little comfort.  So it’s probably not surprising that the traditions of the feasts and festivals of this part of the year include a good deal of baking.  There really is nothing quite as comforting as something stodgy and sweet – especially when it’s warm from the oven!

All Saint’s and All Souls’ Days bring us soul cakes – a cross between a biscuit and scone that was given to children as they went ‘souling’, a distant ancestor of today’s trick-or-treating.  Armistice Day is also St Martin’s Day, marked in Spain with cakes made with the abundant chestnuts of this time of year.  And, of course, we have Stir Up Sunday, when the words of the collect give us a prompt to make our cakes and puddings, so they have a chance to mature before Christmas.  From the low countries and Germany, we have delicious treats like speculoos to mark St Nicholas’ Day.

And then Advent – like Lent, a season of fasting before a feast of great rejoicing.  Not the easiest time to be trying to resist delicious things like mince pies, ecclefechan tarts, stollen and lebkuchen, as they fill the shelves in our supermarkets!

In these months of cooling temperatures, soggy mornings and growing darkness, we reach for the memories of the delicious produce of the summer preserved in milled grain, dried fruits and warming spices to sustain us.  Every mouthful takes us back to the sun of summer and feeds our souls through the dark days into which Jesus came as Light to the world.  May all the good things that we eat through these seasons help to remind us of the gift that God gave us in His Son, born into a world of scarcity and pain as a promise of abundance and healing for us all.

Rev’d Philippa