Beach Hut 1

Launch night for the 2011 Beach Hut Advent Calendar and there was lots going on and lots to talk about. The hut was decorated by St. Christopher's School in Hove who did a fantastic job and supported the whole evening with the school choir singing carols and the youngest children singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Spanish (more explanation about that later).

The hut was a riot of colour as it was filled with papier mache cacti, chillis, paper poinsettias and a baby Jesus in a manger in the middle. This was because the inspiration for our huts this year begins with a Mexican tradition called Las Posadas - a 9 day representation of the journey made by the Holy Family which you can read about here. The children have been learning about the miracle of the poinsettia when a poor girl went to visit church to see the manger and her meagre present of weeds she'd gathered on the way turned into beautiful red flowers.

Our version of this after tonights introduction is to focus on one character every evening, adding to the story each night through December so that we follow the same journey taken by Mary and Joseph until we reach the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. We will have one character on display each night and will bring all these together on Christmas Eve for the first time to make our own nativity scene.

The talk of the evening unfortunately was the rain which persisted all afternoon and all evening and deterred the BBC from covering the event. ITV did brave the weather and were all set up to broadcast live at 6.15pm but there was a problem with the transmission and so the report has been saved over until tomorrow.


Despite the terrible weather, hundreds of people turned out to support their children and to support the launch of this fourth annual beach hut event.


Our next hut will focus on Joseph as one of the key travellers in our journey towards Christmas and is number 268.