For those who don't know what a christingle is, I've listed it's parts below.
A Christingle consists of:
An orange, which represents the earth;
A red ribbon around it representing
the blood of Christ
Dried fruits skewered on cocktail sticks pushed into the orange, representing the fruits of the earth and the four seasons; A lit candle pushed into the centre of the orange, representing Jesus Christ as the light of the world.
This is one of my favourite things leading up to Christmas and was one of the first years that the boys were both old enough to truly join in.
The story of the Christingle is that there were three children, who were very poor, but wanted to give a gift to Jesus, like the other families at church were doing. The only nice thing they had was an orange, so they decided to give him that. The top was going slightly green, so the eldest cut it out and put a candle in the hole. They thought it looked dull, so the youngest girl took her best red ribbon from her hair and attached it round the middle with toothpicks. The middle child had the idea to put a few pieces of dried fruit on the ends of the sticks. They took it to the church for the Christmas mass, and whereas the other children sneered at their meagre gift, the priest took their gift and showed it as an example of true understanding of the meaning of Christmas. Subsequently this is now the symbol for the Children's charity: The Children's Society. Such a great cause check them out here.
http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/
Otherwise enjoy our photos from this morning.
2 comments:
Ah fabulous, I always loved Cristingle as a kid, we took Libby last year, will hopefully go again this year although we couldn't make the one today. Looks like you had a lovely time. Thanks for sharing the meaning behind it as well, I didn't know that, what a lovely story.x
Thanks for commenting. To be honest I've done christingle since I was a kid but today was the first time I heard the back story...that's why I added it here, thought it was interesting! It was a great day, we were a bit anxious about James having I lit candle but he was super good.
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