Last month’s meeting of the Dodbrooke Mothers’ Union was more practical than usual.

The ladies created their own Advent Calendar with a difference. Instead of an individual picture card with 24 ‘windows’ there was a washing line of numbered cards with a selection of colourful photocopies of Victorian, Edwardian and Vintage Christmas cards on their backs.

The session, introduced by church member Chris Stephens began with a brief description of the history of advent calendars, begun by European Protestants in the mid 19th century, who marked every day in December until Christmas Eve with a chalk line on the door or a piece of straw placed in the nativity crib each day. This tradition, he explained, moved to printed versions in Germany in the early 20th century. Then a display of a variety of examples was shown, including a reproduction of the 1947 “Cathedral Place” calendar by the Stuttgart company Sellmer Adsventskalendar, sent especially from Germany for the meeting, a traditional religious shepherd scene from ‘Wordwise’ Christian Bookshop in Fore Street and a Cadbury’s chocolate one from the local supermarket, reminiscent of one of the first actual calendars, made by the German born Gerald Lang’s mother before 1900 – a box lid on which she had sewn 24 cookies.

A 2021 3D Nature calendar “Winter Wonderland”by the printmaker Angela Harding rounded off the display, and then it was out with the cards, the sticky labels (red 1-24, the MU logo and baubles) and the all-important Nativity pictures ( photo-copies of a selection of Victorian , Edwardian and Vintage Christmas cards) the glue sticks, the string and the clothes pegs.

Although there were only a few MU members and friends present, the task was finished in record time and the 24 “pieces of washing” hung out to dry, with numbers facing the front, in sequence, ready for December 1.

The Calendar will be displayed at their Advent Carol Service on the evening of Sunday November 28, a fitting beginning to their pre- Christmas preparations - and an acknowledgement of the continued presence of the Mothers’ Union movement in the Kingsbridge Estuary Churches Mission Community.