Christmas must do list…

We are officially in December, the local towns and villages have switched on their lights, trees are lighting up in peoples windows and children are drafting letters to Father Christmas.

To put it simply, things are starting to feel festive.

Every family has their Christmas traditions, whether it’s when the tree gets decorated, what time Christmas dinner is served, a Christmas day walk or swim or even what time the presents get opened. We all have our special things that make Christmas magical.

We delved into the archives of Victoria’s blogs and found her top ten list of things to do at Christmas from 2011…We think 13 years later, they still sum up a great Christmas must do list. What’s on yours?

1. Christmas Eve carol singing with our guests, friends and family. Eating Pizza slices and drinking mulled wine while we sing English and Cornish carols. Luckily several friends who come have incredible voices and that encourages everyone else and as the mulled wine slips down the carols just get louder.
2. Swimming in the sea on Christmas Day. It seems unlikely on a windy wet day in November but we are often bathed in Midwinter sunshine while getting ready to bathe in the sea. Unfortunately, the sun doesn’t have much warmth so it’s a mad dash to get dressed again.
3. 23rd December: Going to Mousehole to go drinking, and see the lights, while eating stargazey pie on Tom Bawcock’s Eve (you have read The Mousehole Cat haven’t you?). Expect the village to be PACKED for their biggest moment of the year.
4. 23rd December: Going to the Cathedral to sit in the dark listening to the nine carols and nine lessons.
5. Dancing – whenever we have enough people to make a couple of sets. It’s amazing how much fun everyone has as soon as they know the steps to things as simple as The Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow and the Eightsome. The callers and musicians tire long before the dancers.
6. Burning the tree on 12th Night and putting all the different things onto the bonfire that are going to protect Trelowarren for the next twelve months – and then shooting the apple trees while the children run around screeching ‘Oh apple tree oh apple tree may you ever fruitful be’.
7. Watching a blockbuster – all together in a massive family heap
8. Eating out
9. Eating In
10. Midnight snacking, feasting, reading, resting and of course partying 

And she added…’There will be no Grinches. There will be garlands made of greenery and smelling of sweet bay, there will be a crackling fire in the library, there will be fairy lights and candle light, there will be singing, there will be ‘Christmas at Sea’ by Robert Louis Stevenson and there will be dancing.’