TRADITION
Some like it hot!
Some like it not!
Tradition says I have to make it, Once I even had to fake it.
“One last stir and make a wish, Dear, before I put it in the bowl to steam.”
Two small hands on the big wooden spoon, I tried with all my might to make the currants, raisins, bright red cherries little chunks of green and yellow candied peel move. Oops! A spoonful flicked up in an arc and splatted on the linoleum floor. Mum encased my small hands in hers and I squeezed my eyes real tight. I wished my hardest. Would my wish come true? I sort of knew it wouldn’t. Or if it did, it was just the way things would have turned out anyway.
The warmth of coke glowing in the belly of the kitchen stove on a late November day in England, and the aroma of spicy citrus juices with a dash of brandy in the pudding-mix tickled my insides with the anticipation of Christmas.
A last lick of my baby finger, the pudding in its basin, wrapped with cloth and hissing gently in the steamer and anything left in the bowl was mine.
But, twenty five years later our roles were different. I was Mum and my mother was Nanny, visiting for Christmas Day.
“How did the Christmas Pudding turn out, Dear,” she asked.
My insides tensed! Guilt flushed my cheeks. My brain went into overdrive. I had no Christmas Pudding!
I took Mum gently by the elbow and steered her into the living room. “Come and sit down, Mum. Dinner’s almost ready.”
My mind went into top gear!
I had made a Christmas cake. Of course, I hadn’t bothered, or hadn’t had time to top it with marzipan, cover it with hard, white icing and decorate it with a miniature Santa and sleigh by a tiny fir tree. That turned out to be a good thing!
I cut off a hunk of cake and popped it into a basin, covered it with wax paper and foil and set it on high on the stove to steam in a pot of water. I made a jug of creamy, yellow, vanilla custard with Bird’s Custard Powder because that was the tradition back home in England. By the time we had finished eating stuffed roast chicken with Brussels sprouts and baked potatoes the “pudding” would be ready.
I faked it! Did Mum ever know how I cheated? I will never know. She passed on shortly after that Christmas Day.
The question is…shall I make a Christmas Pudding this year? I might…or I might not.
All through the war years Mum had somehow scraped together something for a Christmas Pudding and now, seventy years later …well…I had forgotten how important this tradition was for us in England. It just does not seem so important to me anymore, now that we are in Canada.
Good traditions are worth keeping. It’s good to hold onto them firmly… but not too tightly.
Some like it hot! I do. So does my husband, my son and my grandson.
Some like it not! My daughters don’t, and neither does the other grandson.
Some feel they have to make it. Not me. Not anymore.
Some feel they have to fake it. Never again.
As my daughter said to me, “Would your Mum have even minded if there was no pudding?”
I don’t know, and now I shall never know.
by Andrea Kidd
