Festive fun may have taken a slightly different, socially safe form this year – but the Oakham community has continued and adapted, proving the Grinch is right, that “Christmas will always be as long as we stand heart to heart and hand in hand”.
Some traditions have continued unaltered, whilst many of the School’s festivities have been adapted. There have even been some new ways to celebrate Christmas.
The Music Department launched the inaugural Oakham School Carol Composition Competition – for both Oakhamians and in Prep Schools across the country. Impressively, the prize winners spanned the year groups at Oakham – from the overall winner Ben in Form 7, to the runner-up, Baker in Lower 1.
The longstanding Christmas card competition continued with an amazing array of entries from Oakham’s Art Scholars. This year’s winner, Riya (Form 3), was “happy and surprised” to have won the competition with her beautiful painting of a festive Hambleton House.
For the first time, pupils in the Lower School created a giant Advent Calendar to retell the story of the Nativity over the final 12 days of term. Each of the windows of Lower School Reception transformed into a numbered door which hid an image depicting a scene from the Nativity story that has been drawn or painted by a Lower School pupil.
The campus has had an extra festive feel, thanks to the hard work of the grounds and estates staff who have added more trees and lights than has ever been seen! Usually there is an array of trees in Houses and across the School, but this year, to help share the Christmas spirit, a large tree has been the focal point in the teaching quad and there has been a beautiful arrangement of lights adorning Chapel Close, Schanschieffs and across the School.
