Announcing... A Pinch of Spice

Counting Down to Christmas 2022

Dear friends

It’s the end of September and while Christmas might still seem far away, it’s time for me to start getting a little bit organised.

I’ve been working on this year’s Counting Down to Christmas Advent series over the last few months and I’m ready to tell you more about it. I’m really excited to share this with you.

Like most of my ideas, something sensory triggers my thinking and an idea grows until it becomes a theme. A few months ago when I was actually researching for a completely different writing project, I came across the phrase, ‘A pinch of spice’. It caught my attention - the way just a little pinch can bring about change.

I love the stories of little things. Jesus spoke so much about the power of little things like salt and light, a mustard seed, a pearl, a little boy’s lunch. I’m not one for big is best or big is better. This particularly relates to how I view the way we are called to live out our faith. Our faith journey is a progression of little steps. The outward expression of our faith in showing God’s love to others is about taking little steps, offering small acts of kindness and compassion.

A pinch of spice goes a long way. When used as a flavour enhancer, a pinch of spice brightens up a dish or drink. The smell or taste invites us to be alert, to sit up and take notice. Intriguingly as well as alerting us, the opposite can happen, and we find some familiar spices soothing. Spices are often warming, and our physical response to the smell or taste calms us. The smell or taste of a pinch of spice, especially if it’s one we know and love, can bring us comfort and reassurance.

This got me thinking to the spices we’re familiar with at Christmas and then I started thinking about the origin stories of spices and their journey stories to how they became used worldwide. That led me to spices I wasn’t so familiar with as well and this all started to form into a plan for this Advent.

Distinctive tastes and smells are part of our Christmas festivals and celebrations. Some of these food and decorating traditions date back centuries, and others have much more recent origins. Whether old or new to us, the smells and tastes of our own Christmas engage our senses in our celebration of the birth of Christ. I hope this year’s Counting Down to Christmas is both refreshing and soothing for us.

You can read more about this year’s Counting Down to Christmas on our website and I’ll be popping back into your inbox a few more times before our series starts with some interesting tidbits of information and inspiration.

I wanted those signed up to this list to be the first to hear the news about this year’s Counting Down to Christmas.

Introducing…. A Pinch of Spice kit

I’m very excited about an additional feature we’ve added especially for this year. Unfortunately, it’s only on offer to those based in Aotearoa, New Zealand. This is partly due to the challenges and costs of postage, and also because I wasn’t really sure how easy this would be to deliver internationally.

I’ve gathered 30 different spices (including a handful of herbs) to share with you as we Count down to Christmas. Inside this box there are also some other special treats sourced from around Aotearoa. They’re matched with an extra reflection for you to use at the start of Advent, sometime throughout Advent or at Christmas.

To be honest, I’m swinging between being worried that I'll run out of kits to being worried that our family will have a pantry full of spices for the next few years! I suspect it will be the latter and I’ve over-ordered, so I’d love to enlist your help to tell others about this year’s Counting Down to Christmas.

There’s a combined price for purchasing both a subscription to Counting Down to Christmas and A pinch of spice kit - it’s available on our website. Orders must be in by 26 October 2022 (or while stocks last). We’re including postage in the rate to keep it simple. For those who live outside of Aotearoa or who would prefer to source spices themselves, once you subscribe to the resource I’ll send you a list of the spices we’ll be including so you can gather them ahead of time. There’s no pressure to purchase the kit!

Subscribing

I’d love to have you join me again this year in Counting Down to Christmas. And I’d love it if you could tell any friends or family who might be interested. You can subscribe and pay for the written resource via Substack OR our website. If you want to purchase the box kit, this is only available through our website or by sending me an email.

If you have any questions please just ask and I’d be delighted to answer.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more stories about writing this year’s resource.

On the journey

Caroline