As my four year old will tell you, Christmas doesn’t end with Christmas Day. Actually, in our tradition we only begin the celebration of Christmas on December 25th and carry on for – can you guess? – Twelve Days. It is a tradition I particularly love, because after the long weeks of preparation in Advent we are ready for grand festivities. We are still playing the Christmas carols and enjoying the lights on our tree, and when we have a free moment we have been known to go in search of a Christmassy adventure or two…
This year, as we love to do, we headed back to Burnaby Village. It is charming year round, but it is gorgeous at Christmas time. The buildings are covered in lights and my favourite kind of decorations – ones that look like they were gathered from the woods just outside – are hung all around the town.
One of the best parts – the best part if you ask Miss G. – is the scavenger hunt to find the “Twelve Days of Christmas” hidden around the grounds. We had so much fun trying to track them down (we needed a hint or two from the museum guides) and happily passed a very cold afternoon in a festive Christmas spirit.
For your entertainment (bonus points if you can sing along while reading…)
a partridge in a pear tree…
…two turtle doves…
…three French hens…
…four calling birds (only one fit in my photo but trust me, there were four)…
…five golden rings…(these rings were HUGE! I managed to capture the best one)…
…six geese a’laying… (the man in the print shop who gave us the clue to help find this number had a grammatical issue with the geese – how about you?)…
…seven swans a’swimming (this one we found two times… which one do you like better?)…
or
…eight maids a’milking… (there were eight of these but I wanted to give you a close up to appreciate the cleverness…)
…nine ladies dancing…(there really were nine – all full of lights on the lawn…)
…ten lords a’leaping…
…eleven pipers piping…(so clever!)…
…and twelve (if you can convince eleven people to join you) drummers drumming…
We had so much fun as always at the museum. I wish I could really buy my Christmas presents at the dry goods store…
I think that grey hat would look great on me. Or the green one. Here are a few more moments from our afternoon…
There is nothing like history to make a moment feel more special, at Christmas more than ever. I hope your twelve days of Christmas are full of song and celebration – we are sending some your your way!