It’s the first of December and I’m paying the price for having spent all of November with my fingers in my ears, refusing to have anything to do with the C word till now. But suddenly, we are home from Pittsburgh with a load of washing and other stuff to put away and sort out and aaaagh! It’s time to open the box!

At least experience has taught us to store Advent things separate from Christmas things, and to make sure the Advent box is clearly marked and kept somewhere easily retrievable in the loft. At lunchtime today, then, just before going off to his choir rehearsal my Hero brought the box down and I opened it rather gingerly - after all, who knows what might have snuck in there in the last eleven months!?

I needn’t have worried, for no-one appeared to have taken up residence! As I carefully unpacked the layers, sure enough, all the old favourites were there: the Advent calendar with Teddy’s Christmas Journey and the small book of Christmas stories in German, which offer a bit of reading practice for me each day there on the top.

There’s the Swedish tealight holder which my Hero bought on a trip to northern Sweden in the depths of winter one year. He was there with Tra, recording a Raff CD and one of the joys of unpacking a box like this is savouring one memory after another as things are unwrapped.

A tiny little windmill from the Erzgebirge in Germany, carefully wrapped in tissue paper and stored in its own small box.

When it comes to memory prompts, there’s nothing better than this. It was an online project and I believe Mary was here and made one too? We collected 30 black and white photographs and the various bits and pieces and followed the instructions from - I believe, Heidi Swapp - and created this cute decoration.

It comes out every year and I think, the key to the genius design is that the project included a box in which to store it.

Considering it’s dated 2011 it looks remarkably fresh and the glue has held firm too - I wonder what I used?!

A pile of battery lights reminds me to get out all the rechargeable batteries and put them on charge!

Having got most of the bits and pieces out, now’s the time to decide where to put them all, because in addition to the old favourites, I’ve added a few new ones.

I got a couple of new Advent books when we were in Kleves, on the choir tour in October.

One of them has a page for each day with a brief theme outlined on the first page of a pair…

but the pages are joined at the edge and need to be cut open each day to reveal a small activity. Today, the first, the theme was wishes and the idea was to write a wish list. I had thought the book might be a good prompt for my Christmas Journal, should I run out of ideas!

Another tiny book is made up of individual cards, each one of which will end up in my journal - or at least, that’s the intention at this point.

The thing is, I’m not sure there’s room for everything, both new and old. If I keep adding to the collection, soon there won’t be room to breathe! Shall we leave Teddy in the box this year then and replace him with the new Advent book? What shall we put out and what shall we leave for next year?

Let’s just say I’m still working on it. The Advent candles are on the kitchen table and we lit the first one when we sat down to dinner this evening. But tomorrow, I really must get my act together and add a few finishing touches here and there. It’s a small price to pay for keeping Advent - and Christmas - in December!