Dear Parents and Guardians,
‘Twas (not quite) the night before Christmas and all through the school there have been a flurry of activities (if not yet a flurry of snow!). Welcome to your whistle stop tour through the Holt’s festive calendar of the last seven days.
Let us start with our annual Christmas concert held in St Paul’s church. It was a lovely evening with plenty of well-rehearsed Christmas numbers from varying ensembles including our orchestra, choir, GCSE group, and even a trombone duet to name but a few. There’s something about holding it in the church that always makes it feel extra Christmassey; the candlelit procession of Once in Royal David’s City sung by our soloist Ruby, the rousing congregation carols, and our lovely readings- it really is a special evening. We’re so grateful to the students, Father Sam, and Mr Gray and Mrs Crozier (our music department) for curating a yuletide evening for us all to enjoy. We’re also grateful for those of you who came to support the concert and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
On to Friday where our Christmas Fair arrived! Some of you may have been confused as to the appearance of a large purple koala on our social media recently- he was one of the prizes available to win at our fair should someone guess his name correctly!
His name was “Jingle” and a lucky Year 7 left on Friday with a new koala-friend!
The Christmas Fair featured lots of House Stalls selling cakes, hot chocolates, sweets, popcorn, and varying games to play. We’re incredibly grateful to our Heads of House and our teams of prefects who organised such fun for everyone.
Another very popular feature of our Christmas Fair is the tombola manned by our sixth form volunteers who, this year, labelled a vast number of prizes that were won in roughly an hour and a half!
The tombola is a great source of funding for Friends of the Holt who do such great work in making our school site a really nice environment for our students to learn in. Thank you to everyone who donated prizes for the tombola, and I do hope that whatever you sent in wasn’t re-won and brought back again!
In, what felt like the blink of an eye, it was Tuesday and time for the school to bedeck itself in woollen Christmas finery for Christmas Jumper Day and our school Christmas lunch. This year things have changed slightly as we introduced the “Turkey Stack”- a burger consisting of a turkey patty infused with sage and onion (the traditional turkey and stuffing), a sausage meat patty and bacon (the “pig-in-blanket”), a hashbrown (the roast potato), and then a condiment station for students to customise their burger as they wished- whether that be with the more traditional cranberry sauce and gravy, or with the slightly more unusual Christmas dinner addition of spicy sriracha sauce! It was a lovely atmosphere with Christmas music and lots of students choosing to exchange their secret Santa gifts during Christmas lunch too!
As the last tray was cleared and the final cracker pulled, it was on to the Sixth form quiz which pitted sixth form and staff teams against one another in a festive show down organised by our new Student Leadership Team. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and incredibly well attended with over 150 people in the sixth form centre to see if they could remember what the best-selling Christmas song of all time is! (Apparently, ‘White Christmas’!) A big thank you to the new Student Leadership Team and everyone who came to partake…I’ve almost got over our second place staff team ranking…almost!
On Wednesday the music department were go again as we took twenty students down to WADE Day Centre to sing some carols to and with the day centre guests. Our links with WADE are so valuable to the school community and it’s always lovely to be able to bring some Christmas cheer to those around you. We thank WADE for hosting us and the very thoughtful mince pies and squash they served to us afterwards.
Whilst all this has been going on we’ve also continued our traditional “Christmas Doors” competition that sees form groups get creative by creating a Christmas “door” for their form room. Every year the Heads of Year are faced with the unenviable task of judging which form are awarded that coveted first place spot- things get very competitive and more and more creative. Some of the more competitive forms may even be discussing Christmas Door competition 2026 already! I’ll share Year 9’s winner with you!
This week has also seen our Year Group Presentation assemblies, celebrating the hard work and involvement of our students, and (if you’ve made it this far through the blog) I’m sure you’ll agree there’s an awful lot to celebrate.
Lastly, in MFL, Mrs Totolan-Moore and various students have worked hard to complete the latest festive edition of their magazine La Hispana. Please do take a look. La Hispana | The Holt School
Friday brings with it our End of Term assembly organised by our out-going Student Leadership team who will hand the reigns to the successors. We’d like to thank them for all of their hard work and leadership over the last year and wish them luck in the next stages of their journeys!
Over the last two weeks our thought for the week has centred around my favourite Christmas film, The Muppet Christmas Carol. I am currently making my way through the original book- though I have to say, it doesn’t feel quite as jolly without Kermit the Frog as Bob Crachett! The Ghost of Christmas Present encourages Michael Cain’s Scrooge to see the true meaning of Christmas by saying “It’s true, wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas”, and that “It is the season of the spirit, the message, if we hear it, is make it last all year!” and so I leave you all hoping that your festive breaks are full of love and happiness that lasts all the year through. We look forward to seeing students back at school on Monday 5th January 2026.
Elizabeth Harris
Assistant Headteacher