Christmas Is Coming

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat

Please put a penny in the old man's hat

If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do

If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you!

Miss Martha is getting very excited about Christmas and at nursery school they are planning to put on a Nativity play. I believe she heard the story of Jesus' birth for the first time today. It can't have been that convincing.

Granny, the Baby Jesus isn't real.

Oh?

He's not real. It's only a story,

On the way home I taught her the Christmas Is Coming rhyme. She liked it. Kept getting me to repeat it.

Say it again, Granny.

There were lots of questions.

Why is the goose getting fat?

So that people can eat it at Christmas. Who wants a thin goose? It needs to be fat and juicy.

What's a ha'penny?

Old money that we don't use any more.

What's 'God bless you'?

Something nice that people say to each other.

Later, when painting, she was creating a Nativity scene. The stable was pink.

Granny, what colour is a camel?

Sort of orangey brown.

Martha loves mixing colours. She knows how to make pink. Lots of red and lots of white. Her palette is enormous amounts of pink and little daubs of the other colours. We tried to make orangey brown with pink, yellow and black. It didn't look right. I cried off claiming I needed 5 minutes alone with my coffee and no interruptions. Martha declared that orangey brown needed green to make it work. So she finished off with a pink stable, an orangey browny greeny camelly creature and some clouds. No Baby Jesus for he's not real.

However Santa Claus is very real indeed.