Nuts, puddings and crackers: coping with an English Christmas

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1996 by Jean Davis

In among the mutterings at yet another chore, each year the mind tucks away the resolve not to stock up with gimmickry this time. Items such as sugared almonds, crackers, dates, crystallised this and that, walnuts, almonds, Brazil, hazel, pecan nuts, you name it, exotica bursting with promise on supermarket shelves - this year will be passed by on the other side.

This, as a proposed line of action, is a lost cause, of course. It is on a par with the determination to reduce the overall impression of stocking for a siege, to cut down on quantities of ham, pork, brussels sprouts (nobody likes the things, anyway), to make fewer sausage rolls and mince pies. Carried away on waves of euphoria, there are added blissful ideas. Why not omit making all those puddings, refuse to produce an iced cake (which again nobody wants or likes, and which tends to linger until the Spring), and refuse to confront an enormous turkey? That will do away with the trauma of rising at dawn, after lying awake half the night trying to fit it, mentally, into the oven?

Alas and alack, woe and don't think life is like that. Any advance planning, any faint hope that perhaps, this once, it will be different, will fall when the first member of the family notes that some vital part of ritual has been missed.

'Where are the nuts, then?'

'But we always have sugared almonds on the table!'

'No ham for breakfast?' or 'fish pie', 'pickled herrings', 'pirozhki', perhaps 'carp' or 'Christstollen' on Christmas Eve? In these days of disappearing frontiers and much travelled youth, someone is bound to point out that presents in most parts of Europe are handed out the night before, so why should hard-done-by offspring in these islands have to wait until the long night passes? That is the way traditions start, they reply, should there be resistance.

Any feeble cries that general rituals associated with Christmas are of comparatively recent origin are ignored. Before Saturnalia, even, (another imported rite) the peasantry had to have something to stop them rebelling and being more than usually revolting, and when the Romans came they extended the holiday to seven days. Which, when you come to think of it, put extra burdens on the housewife even then.

Many a harassed hostess must have cursed the patrician insistence on menus including fiddly larks' tongues, baked hedgehog, fresh grapes when one or all were out of season, and anyway had a limited life-span. It can't have been easy with slave labour at its most indolent, suffering from the prevailing hang-over, and when any notion of preserving was confined to ice caves and when in doubt, treading anything available to turn it into wine.

The Twelve Days of mediaeval misrule and revelry diluted more barbaric practices, but there were still, doubtless, cries of 'Why have you altered the stuffing in the peacock?' 'But Madame my mother always had hippocras, why do we have to have mead?' echoing through castle and cot.

Prince Albert stopped all that; Yule logs and holly lost mystic significance, were supplanted by dark Christmas trees, swathed evergreen drapes, overeating, the family sitting around groaning tables - togetherness was In. The housewife, cook, the poor, aided by Dickens and the home life of 'our own dear Queen', was forced to soldier on, way beyond Edwardian times.

No chatelaine was worth her salt unless she began preparations in September: half a dozen puddings steaming the kitchen out, gigantic fruit cakes, home-made mincemeat, all of which sat smugly, in white damasked basin, airtight tin, gleaming jar, awaiting last minute whirlwind touches.

In the gathering winter gloom turkeys, geese, chickens fattened, hams hung, home-brew burped. Last minute pastries, pies, vegetables, fruits, jellies, syllabubs; by the dawn of St. Stephen's Day no wonder the mistress of the house was glad to see the back of everyone trudging off to the traditional Meet.

Life is much easier now, but, still, the sneaking wish to cut down, just this once, to stop being pressured, to take Christmas in one's stride, without making hard work of it, appeals.

But be warned. Remember Befana. Her real name was Epiphania, and she is remembered in Italy, on Twelfth Night, because she did rebel. When, so the legend goes, the Three Wise Men took their gifts to the infant Jesus, they wanted somewhere to be lodged, fed, entertained.

She said she was too busy.

Well, immersed in all the chores of the normal household, faced with unexpected guests when the house was already full, all the preparations, cooking, the comings and goings - 'Can't you see I'm up to my ears'? You go and do what you have to, I'll see to you on your way back.'

But they went home by a different route, and so, to atone, on Twelfth Night she has to stay awake, to hand out presents to all the children, as she waits, once again, for the Magi to return. 'Ecco la Befana!' the children greet her, delighting in another round of presents.

This should serve as an Awful Warning, not to think that any part of the yearly ritual can be skimped. When the leaves fall from the trees, when dried fruit, recipes, advice, nuts, glowing satsumas and the first stirrings of memory bring almost forgotten excitement, there is no way out. It is heigh-ho for all the preparations, shopping, cooking, remembering those little touches that make for family custom. After all, Spring is a long way off, and think of poor old Befana.