“Stir-Up” Sunday traditionally falls in the Roman and Anglican Church during Advent -several weeks before Christmas Day. Through the years Advent may have evolved – yet this Sunday still comes with unique prayers (including a Collect), a fun “culinary activity”, and infinite Yuletide patience…
Today, families combine their own special cake ingredients with a special shared “mixing” activity – as young and old take a turn as able – and offer their silent prayers and hopes for others in the New Year. Sometimes this ritual even involves the direction one faces the bowl – or stirs the spoon. Then, after the “first cooking” come the weeks of waiting through Advent until the “second cooking” on Christmas Day. Ponder the theology of THAT!
The “Stirring” Collect (!)
Third Sunday of Advent
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come
among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins,
let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver
us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and
the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever.
Amen
1979 Book of Common Prayer – The Episcopal Church
from 2019
with the late Queen Elizabeth II
Mindful of the needs of others…
“Mrs Cratchit left the room alone – too nervous to bear witnesses – to take the pudding up and bring it in… Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper which smells like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered – flushed, but smiling proudly – with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.”
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens – London: Chapman & Hall, 1843
Traditional Christmas Cake recipes abound – but in the flurry of holiday activity this may prove a time saver. Not to mention it is designed to store and reheat, and then set on fire with brandy. Perhaps it is divinely inspired…
Visit
“Queen Elizabeth’s Own” Holiday Cake – our family favorite recipe – HERE
“A Simple Christmas Pudding” from “Merryboosters” – Download or Print a PDF HERE