Christmas on the beach

This (Christmas) morning we snuck away from the mince pies for an hour and went to Exmouth to witness the Exmouth Christmas Swim. The rain held off but the wind was chilly, not a day to go anywhere near the sea.


But at 11am, hundreds of people sang 'Merry Christmas' then plunged headlong into the water. Our friend Jo was one of them.



Most didn't stay long...


...many were in costume or fancy dress...




...but all agreed how invigorating it was.

It's a relatively new, secular festive ritual, a very English form of baptism, a symbolic death and rebirth in the midst of winter. It's silly but properly meaningful. No wonder it's proving so popular.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, December 26, 2012

    Has all the world gone mad? I hope so!

    Rex

    ReplyDelete
  2. A mermaid in the atticWednesday, December 26, 2012

    Daleks can swim too?! It freaked me out enough learning they could fly up stairs, now I'm really scared!

    We are intending to head to the beach tomorrow...it's been like a fan-forced oven outside all day. We are in for a week of over 40˚C...yuk! So definitely in danger of going mad here!

    ReplyDelete

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