This morning, in towns and villages all over the country, people will be standing by war memorials in their warmest coats with poppies pinned on, waiting for the clock to reach eleven. It's Remembrance Sunday, and Wednesday is Armistice Day itself.
We have nothing special in the shop for it, and to be honest we wouldn't want to. It still felt wrong to let the week go by on the blog without saying something, though. So here's a short post about the day, plus a few mugs that sit nicely alongside it.
What Remembrance Day is
The fighting of the First World War stopped at 11am on 11 November 1918, when the Armistice came into force. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Most of us learned that line at school and never quite forgot it.
Ever since, the day has been about remembering the people who served and died in that war and in the conflicts that came after. Nowadays it's marked twice. There's Remembrance Sunday, the second Sunday in November, and there's Armistice Day on the 11th, whatever day of the week that turns out to be. This year it's a Wednesday.
Where the poppy and the silence come from
The red poppy comes from the fields of Flanders, where poppies grew on the churned-up ground of the Western Front. The Canadian doctor John McCrae wrote the poem "In Flanders Fields" about them in 1915, and they've been the symbol of remembrance ever since.
Then there's the two-minute silence at eleven o'clock. If you think about it, it's quite a thing. Offices, building sites, train stations and supermarket aisles all go quiet together. If you've ever been somewhere busy when it happens, you'll know how strange and moving it is. Even the tills stop beeping.
The parts that feel close to home
The big ceremonies get the coverage, but for a lot of us the day feels most real somewhere smaller. Maybe it's the names on the memorial in your own village, read out one at a time. Maybe it's a paper poppy a child brings home from school, slightly wonky and very proud.
For plenty of families it's also the one week of the year when the old photos come out of the drawer. Someone asks who that is in uniform, and someone older at the table actually knows. Those conversations are worth having while you can, and they tend to go better with a brew. (Standing outside in November is cold. Nobody has ever turned down a cuppa afterwards.)
A few mugs from the shop that suit the week
None of these are made for the day. They're just mugs we have that feel right for it, in a quiet sort of way.
- A First World War poster mug. There's one design in our World War One Poster Mugs, and it's the one we'd point to first this week. It's a good fit for anyone who's been reading up on that period, or anyone who has a great-grandparent's medals in a box upstairs.
- Something for the history lover. We all know one: the person who has the documentary on while everyone else wants the quiz. Have a look through our History Mugs for them.
- A Keep Calm mug, for the story behind it. The original "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was printed in 1939 for the Second World War. It hardly went on display at the time, and decades later it turned up again in a second-hand bookshop. Our Keep Calm Mugs have plenty of spins on that phrase, and it's a nice bit of history to pass on with one.
- Something for the storytellers. If your nan or grandad is the one who remembers the family history, a mug from our Grandparents Mugs makes a lovely excuse to sit down with them, put the kettle on and ask questions.
If anyone in the family would like something with a bit of old-fashioned charm instead, our small Vintage & Retro collection is worth a look too.
Wherever you are at eleven on Wednesday
You might be at a memorial, at your desk, in the car or halfway down the cereal aisle. Whichever it is, it's worth stopping for those two minutes. It costs nothing, it means a great deal, and doing it together with strangers makes it feel like what it is: something shared.
Then put the kettle on, ring someone older in the family, and ask them what they remember.
We will remember them.
