Mary Lourdes Bonnici MBA

  🎄 DAY 83 • 83 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS 🍪 Gingerbread at Christmas — From Spiced Baking to Festive Tradition Christmas Traditions, Stories & Festive Living A celebration of tradition, memory, culture, kindness and the timeless magic of Christmas. There are some Christmas traditions we recognise not only by sight, but by smell . The warm aroma of ginger, cinnamon and cloves drifting through a kitchen can instantly create a feeling of Christmas. Add a tray of decorated gingerbread biscuits, a little gingerbread house covered with icing and perhaps a child waiting impatiently to taste the first biscuit, and we have one of the most familiar scenes of the festive season. Yet gingerbread did not begin as the smiling gingerbread person we know today. Its story developed across centuries of trade, European baking, fairs, craftsmanship, folklore and family Christmas traditions . So for Day 83 of our Christmas journey, we are travelling back through that history to discover how spice...

  🎄 DAY 93 • 93 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS Christmas Memories — Moments That Stay in Our Hearts Christmas Traditions, Stories & Festive Living “The decorations are eventually packed away, but the memories created around them can remain with us for a lifetime.” Yesterday, on Day 94 , we explored The Christmas Card — a tradition that carries greetings, affection and remembrance from one person to another. Today, we move from the messages we send to something even more personal: the memories we keep . Christmas is unusual because it is not experienced only in the present. A familiar carol can remind us of childhood. An ornament can recall someone who once placed it on the tree. A recipe can carry the memory of a grandparent. A photograph can return us, for a moment, to a Christmas celebrated decades earlier. Research on family rituals and Christmas traditions helps explain why these apparently ordinary details can become so meaningful. Rituals, sensory experiences, objects and repeated f...

  🎄 99 Days to Christmas Why Christmas Feels So Special: The Psychology of Christmas Nostalgia By Mary Lourdes Bonnici Christmas Traditions, Stories & Festive Living — Day 99 Sometimes Christmas seems to arrive before the decorations are even taken out of their boxes. We hear the opening notes of a familiar Christmas song. We smell cinnamon, cloves, oranges or something baking. We see an ornament that has been in the family for years. And suddenly, we are somewhere else. Perhaps we remember Christmas mornings from childhood. A grandparent's home. A family gathering. A particular meal. Someone we love. Or simply the feeling of waiting excitedly for Christmas to arrive. That experience has a name: nostalgia . And it is the perfect place to begin our official journey through Christmas Traditions, Stories & Festive Living . What Is Nostalgia? Nostalgia is much more complex than simply remembering the past. Researchers at the University of Southampton describe it as ...

  🎄 Christmas Traditions, Stories & Festive Living A 100-Day Journey to Christmas Begins Christmas has always been more than a date on the calendar. It is a season filled with memories, traditions, familiar music, treasured recipes, glowing lights, family moments and stories passed from one generation to another. For many of us, even the smallest Christmas detail — the scent of something baking, the sound of a favourite carol or the sight of an old decoration — can bring back memories we thought we had forgotten. That is the inspiration behind Christmas Traditions, Stories & Festive Living . And today feels like the perfect moment to begin. Today, 17 September 2026 , including today itself, there are one hundred calendar days until Christmas Day . 🎄✨ So today, I begin a very special journey — a one-hundred-day journey towards Christmas, filled with tradition, memory, culture, food, history, kindness and festive living. Why I Created This Christmas Collection I c...