John Meredith had never gone in for Advent Calendars or Candles. That they had an Advent Candle now was because Rosemary grew up with one and not unlike the cats, this was a habit of hers that she could not let go of. He did not mind, because there was something inviting about candlelight that was well suited to the nature of Advent. But what he had always done was 'build up' a Nativity over the Sundays before Christmas. You began, he explained to Jim and John, because he had taught Walter in days gone by, with the animals. He gave a donkey to Jim and a lying-down cow to John, and to Walter he gave the crib. What little theology Walter had allowed him to conclude that he had been given the most important piece of this Sunday's scene, and he was quietly content.

He could talk of nothing else when he got home, and Faith had to prod him into conceiving of a wish to stir into the Christmas pudding; it was her turn to make it this year because Nan had more than done her bit in making the Christmas cake three times over. If there were Words, on Susan's part, about being pushed out of her own kitchen, the children she brought up by hand in conjunction with 'Mrs. Dr. dear' never got to hear of it, and nor did the Merediths. Besides, Susan liked to think she had contributed to their culinary competence.

'I don't say,' she said to Anne, ' that Faith will not make as good a pudding as we've ever had for Christmas Mrs. Dr. Dear, but I do say that it doesn't feel right not having anything to do by way of preparing ahead of time.'

'But the children must have their chance at wishes, Susan, and we have no one by to help us stir it anymore.'

'A better wish to stir into pudding than having them all home again I can't think of,' said Susan staunchly.

At Advent II Mary and Joseph were added to either side of the crib. Some more complicated Nativity scenes had a 'stable' to frame them; this was nothing so grand. It was an olivewood Nativity that a travelling friend had brought home to John Meredith. He used to use it at the Maywater church during the 'time with children,' but as the Glen church had come with its own Christmas things he had retired it to the house. He was cherishing now the fact that he and his grandsons could devote Sunday afternoon to recreating the Christmas story as he used to do with his own children. He couldn't decide what he enjoyed more; the look in little John's eyes that was so completely the look of his mother when thoughtful, or the grin Walter was possessed of that he had inherited from Faith, or if perhaps it was Jim's wide-open and flashing eyes with an energy that reminded him of Cecilia; all of these at once, he thought, as he and Walter put the Mother of God and Joseph on the windowsill.

Gil's family, Walter discovered, did a proper calendar, with little doors and pictures. He boasted of this to his cousin, and for a moment Walter envied him the dear little doors, but then he had tried to peer into one and he found they were awkward to open one at a time and not half so tactile as his Grandfather's wooden figures.

The Sunday that Rosemary, Bruce and Una called Gaudete Sunday was the Sunday the shepherds made an appearance. Of course this was out of liturgical sequence, and Walter pointed this out now.

'But the shepherds don't come until after, Granddad,' he said, with a question in his voice.

'That's right, so be sure you don't put them by the crib just yet, put them over here, look, by the hook for the curtain pull. There, now we have 'shepherds abiding in their fields', no?'

'Sheep!' said John happily, and put his two, ewe and lamb, next to Walter's standing shepherd. Jim put his at the feet of the kneeling shepherd; if he was kneeling in adoration of the Christ that had yet to arrive, neither child pointed this out nor did their grandfather call attention to it.

Little John took away from this that sheep were important for this particular Sunday, and in tribute, rooted out the two sheep from the Noah's ark and set them on the nursery windowsill. When his mother tried to tidy them away at bedtime, he explained in his babyish way about the sheep and church and What Grandfather Said. Mercifully, Ua had once assembled the same scene in the same way and understood. She gave little John back the sheep and carried him downstairs so that they could add them to the tableau unfolding on the whatnot shelf. It was less grand than Grandfather's, but his father made it after the war, as a wedding gift for his mother, and the Noah's ark sheep looked at home among the maple-wood crèche. That bedtime, remembered by John as bathed in candlelight, comprising the sound of his mother's voice, the smell of the lavender water she had worn for longer than he could remember, and the story she told him, formed his first distinctive memory of his mother. It was clearer even than the memory of a lily-white lamb of a girl, who he never quite forgot, who he used to share bath-time with and who he would forever associate, inexplicably with his mother's white lilacs.

They put in the two angels on Advent four; there was a Latinate name for this day too, but it escaped John Meredith, and it did not matter to the children. That year Advent was foreshortened, being one of those rare years when Christmas Eve came on the heels of the last Sunday in Advent, and in the evening, after the Christmas service, the boys detoured to the Manse with their Grandfather to add the Christ Child to the crib. This task was given to Jim, because, after all, he was not only the littlest but a Christmas baby himself. This done they walked through the snow, with Granddad and Grandmother, to Ingleside and in-between Christmas supper and games of hide-and-go-seek with Bruce, they ducked into the kitchen and beg more biscuits and much-loved 'brown stuff' off of Grandmother Susan, who had very few reservations about spoiling them.

In the background, making a neat counterpoint to their own noise, their parents were singing. They sang 'Tomorrow Shall be my Dancing Day,' and Gil looked appealingly at Susan for an explanation of how this had anything to do with the child they put in the crib on the Manse windowsill or the snow or the tree by the piano. She thought he was just the picture of Rilla at that age, all hazel eyes and red hair. 'Holly and the Ivy' took over and Nan came through, and made the children, herself and Susan mugs of cocoa. Susan tried to tell her that John and Jim were really too little, also that 'Holly and the Ivy' had heathen notions in it, but Nan said only that given how much 'heathen' practice the church had adapted it was only right some of its music should nod in recognition to its history, and added that, insofar as cocoa went, it wouldn't be fair to leave the babies out. 'I'll just give them a very little, shall I Susan?'

'I suppose it will help them sleep,' said Susan, not liking to think how John's mother would look at her if she knew. Over her shoulder and through the kitchen door, Nan called out to Rosemary, at the piano, 'let's have 'See Amid the Winter's Snow',' and grinned at Susan because she knew it was a favourite with her. Rosemary complied and moved from that to one she knew to be Una's favourite and suspects of being Nan's also, so that as the children, Susan and their aunt emerged from the kitchen it was to join in with glad strains of;

Christ was born on Christmas day;

Wreath the holly, twine the bay;

Christus natus hodie,

The Babe, the Son the Holy One of Mary.

As in previous years Jem and his family stayed on at Ingleside, and when Una and Shirley insisted, Nan and Jerry came back with them. It would not feel like Christmas morning at Greengage Close without company, they said. Nan and Jerry seized upon the offer because Christmas morning at their own house was always stiflingly quiet. Penny curled up at Nan's feet, grateful that the cats did not feel possessive of her, and Jerry and Bruce went out with her while the light was still watery on the snow, and tore about with her in Rainbow Valley until the sun made up its mind to put in an appearance. Then they went back to the house to find John and his mother engaged in guiding the shepherds on their journey from the far side of the whatnot to the nativity scene.

'Sheep,' John informed his uncles solemnly, and pointed happily at the interloping sheep from the wooden ark.

'Merry Christmas,' said Una, setting John down and coming through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Bruce picked his nephew up and made him swoop and fall like an aeroplane, to the child's delight. He remembered it was a favourite game of his own, and he swallowed his laughter when Jerry said 'careful!' and refrained from asking how teaching Gil and Walter to climb trees ranked as a safer activity.

Later in the day, all the little boys would reassemble in the Manse drawing room and relocate the olivewood shepherds. If it had become something of a ritual to have Christmas Eve at Ingleside, it had equally become their pattern to have Christmas afternoon at the Manse, and the children poured over the crèche and listened attentively to the Christmas Story for the nth time that month –because they had been hearing it in instalments as the scene on the windowsill expanded –while their mothers and grandmother battled over the kitchen. Faith gave up fairly early on and came to join her boys and Nan, saying, 'I think my sister and Rosemary can more than competently manage dinner. Two more territorial women I don't know.'

'You know me, and Di and Susan,' said Nan laughing.

'It's not the same thing; I didn't grow up cooking with you. There's a whole hierarchy involved in working with the pair of them that I've never yet grasped; if Una's in charge Bruce cuts the vegetables, if Rosemary is then Una does, or something like that, though I won't 'tie to it' as Susan would say.'

'It sounds as if you know an awful lot about it,' Nan said, still laughing. She learnt a long time ago that the one thing you did not challenge was a woman's right to her kitchen when she was cooking.

'It sounds complicated, more nearly,' said Faith and laughed herself.