Advent Sunday 2019 - 1st December 2019
Stir up Sunday or the first Sunday in Advent is a tradition that I have followed on and off for years, being the day that the Christmas pudding was traditionally made. Some of my earliest memories centre around the memory of my mum making the puddings and cooking them in the gas copper that was located in the kitchen both at the cottage and at the house in Uppingham. We were always encouraged with both the pudding and the cake to have a stir of the mixture and make a wish. Other customs were that my Nan always used to slip in some silver threepenny bits into the pudding mix and the recipient used to supposedly have good luck all year round. You never got to keep the threepenny bit (they were out of use by then) and Nan used to reclaim them for the next year. We never did find her stash of silver threepenny bits after she passed, but I think the custom passed out of practice because of concerns of the metal being exposed to the sweet sticky pudding mix and concer...