Advent tea

Advent tea

My family has always enjoyed marking the seasons and celebrating key events in the cycle of nature, the liturgical year and folk tradition. One of our regular events iswhat we call Advent tea.

Tea times on the four Sundays of Advent offer opportunities for entertaining people one would not normally invite for a meal. Towards the end of November we begin to ask each other whom we want to invite to tea on each of the four Advent Sundays. We aim for a spread of ages, and are careful to include each week someone elderly (particularly if they might be lonely), someone single and a family with young children. In theory the invitations can be extended to Christmas Eve for the lighting of the fifth candle, but quite often we are too disorganised for that, so the final event of the sequence is just celebrated as a family...

Taken from Doing December Differently by Nicola Slee and Rosie Miles.  Click here