People say that the modern Christmas focuses too much on food instead of, like in olden times, the little Baby Jesus. Piffle. As pagan midwinter festivals gave way in the 17th century to a 12-day feast of the nativity shindigs, the focus has always been on wine, wassail and plum puds. We are a cold and rainy island in the North Sea; dark by teatime for six months each year. Whatever late December means to you, it should be a time of twinkly lights, nourishing love and minor indigestion.
I am from a Church of England background, with tales of Mary, Joseph, stars and swaddling clothes imprinted on my psyche. But still, for me, Christmas is primarily marked by a series of tasty traditions. The first mince pie of the season, eaten around the eighth of December; you bought the box “for guests”, yet you crack it open alone, with an afternoon cuppa. Sweet, satisfying – an old friend back for another year. Or eating several Cadbury’s tree decorations on the 13th, as you wrestle with a tangled ball of lights. I shall glaze a ham in cola, Nigella-stye, despite not liking ham, purely because my family adore it. On Christmas Day morning, there’ll be salmon and eggs, then a quickly loaded dishwasher, then a houseful of steam, sprout smells, pinging microwaved puddings and a hunt for misplaced brandy butter.
The Nine Lessons and Carols is a strange, lovely thing that has played on BBC radio and TV close to midnight on Christmas Eve since I was small. It tells the main thrust of the Advent story in nine chunks from the Old and New Testaments; the shepherds, the wise men, the manger, the magic of God’s eternal love and so on.
But these lessons also apply very specifically to chefs, hosts and everyone planning to spend Boxing Day in elasticated waist pants eating turkey curry with a beaker of Baileys. Christmas is about love, and there is no greater way to show that love, in the north at least, than feeding people coronation chicken vol-au-vents and sherry trifle until it inhibits their breathing.
The outline of my family changes and mutates; I can no longer peel sprouts with my father and dance to Jona Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry on the kitchen wireless. But I shall make a Nutella star bread with my niece and listen to Mariah Carey. Time moves on; our tastes stay vaguely similar. We shall make our own delicious memories. These, then, are my very own lessons, with a carol to match.
The first lesson: the serpent beguiled Adam into eating the apple. Genesis 3
It sat beneath the tree from December the 8th, tempting us. Sending our tiny minds fizzy. The Dent family Christmas tin of Quality Street was in the house. My little brother David and I must not touch it. We must not rattle it. We certainly must not prise open the lid of the metal tin and snaffle a sneaky, pre-Christmas hazelnut noisette green triangle. Besides, it had been sealed with sticky tape by Rowntree Mackintosh.
Family rules said that the tin could only be opened on the 25th as a pre-breakfast snack, possibly while bashing away on a Speak & Spell, or pogo sticking around the living room to Super Trouper by Abba. Oh, the weeks of waiting were painful. The sleeplessness, bickering and begging for just one toffee finger or strawberry cream. Crucially, these chocolates were not available anywhere else throughout the year. They taught Generation X, across Britain, the powerful joy of deferred gratification.
I can trace all of society’s ills, in a 10pm pub argument, back to the point in history when we began flogging boxes of purely purple ones at any old WH Smith regional train platform shop all year round. You can’t just buy a box of the best ones. You need to spend early January enduring the toffee pennies. Feelings run high in the Dent family on this matter, and for this reason I still cannot forgive my brother for gently peeling the sticky tape off the tin in mid-December 1988, eating all of the green triangles, then sticking it back. Thirty years on. Still fuming.
Carol: What Sweeter Music by John Rutter
The second lesson: God promises to faithful Abraham that in his seed shall all the nations of the Earth be blessed. Genesis 22
As you load a supermarket trolley sky-high with stuffing mix, sponge ladyfingers and brandy butter, what is your vibe? Is it stoic? Long-suffering? It’s not like you do this Christmas thing every year for yourself. It’s for everyone else: the little ones, your old Aunt Peg, your visiting cousins. They expect a traditional Christmas and you, like a trouper, deliver. Without them, would you even put up the tree? Yes, you would, because you’re the Christmas martyr.
Every family has one, and in the Dent family I am it. “Oh, I’ll cook again, I suppose,” I sigh wearily, secretly gleeful that I can fight in the Christmas Eve Marks & Spencer coleslaw wars. Because what says “Jesus is coming” more than being elbowed in the kidneys over reduced-sticker profiteroles?
In 2017, I did the Christmas big shop on 23 December. Six people, eating for four days, done in under 55 minutes, with two trolleys, in an almost-closing Sainsbury’s in Penrith. The feelings of stress, exhilaration, consumer camaraderie and faux-put-uponness were better than being on MDMA. Here, have a warm mince pie? I only do this for you.
Carol: Hail Ye Flowers Of Martyrs, author unknown
The third lesson: the prophet foretells the coming of the saviour. Isaiah 11
Some Christmas guests are expected with more trepidation than others. The sole vegan at the table, for example, should rest assured that their preference for roast potatoes without goose fat has been dissected for months on a secret family WhatsApp group called Picky Eater.
It’s not easy being different. Finding coeliac-friendly panettone and lactose-tolerant trifle is tricky in Crewe, so be prepared to be singled out by your beloveds as starry. Be grateful. Gobble up that nut-free Christmas pudding, which you didn’t ask for anyway, because it probably came via mail order, p&p £5. Likewise, thank hosts warmly for “getting you in” a bottle of Shloer, warm in the certainty that everyone’s been pre-briefed on your recent secret rehab stint.
All Christmas gatherings need one awkward guest for conspiratorial chatter subject matter while filling the dishwasher. And you’re it, with your fancy London ways, refusing to eat Auntie Pat’s pork and egg lattice. Who do you think you are – Rihanna?
Carol: Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, by Charles Wesley
The fourth lesson: the peace that Christ shall grow is foreshown. Isaiah 11
You know this one: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together…”
It was another snoozy Sunday afternoon drive with my grandmother. Late December 1978, my mother driving, me in the back. We motored along Cumbrian backroads in the Austin Princess, stopping for tea and rhubarb plate cake at a tearoom, listening to Jimmy Shand and his band on cassette, talking about the school nativity play and my role as the angel Gabriel. (No speaking lines, just handing out a Tiny Tears wrapped in a tea towel.)
We pulled up at a farm near Ulverston that I realise now specialised in free-range, corn-fed turkeys, where I tagged along behind my grandmother’s walking stick into a barn full of squawking, slightly stinky but still lovable, living, breathing, wobbly-necked birds. The rest is a blur. We left with a dead one in the boot. I have, since then, had several issues with Isaiah’s vision that the coming of Christ’s birth signifies a time of great peace and equanimity for the animal kingdom. Clearly he had never set eyes on an Iceland five-bird roast.
Carol: In The Bleak Midwinter, based on a poem by Christina Rossetti
The fifth lesson: the angel Gabriel salutes the Blessed Virgin Mary. Luke 1
“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son.”
At the heart of the Christmas story, lest we forget, is a woman with no watertight story of how she got up the duff. Mary was, we are told, impregnated by a celestial spirit on behalf of God. And lo, from then on, women have celebrated Mary’s story from mid-December onwards by also getting pregnant with only scant recollection of the finer details. Was it the Holy Spirit who smiled down and gave you a child? Or was it Tariq from Global Marketing who you drank flaming sambucas with after a Wham medley? Almost every September birth that happened during the 80s is the product of Taboo and lemonade, breakfast buck’s fizz or half-pints of Malibu and pineapple.
Carol: O Come, All Ye Faithful, author unknown
The sixth lesson: St Luke tells of the birth of Jesus. Luke 2
Luke’s lesson is about overcrowding (no room at the inn): a problem as old as time. It’s a reminder to millennials to stay holy at the Christmas dinner table when Uncle Trev, who bought a four-bedroom semi for £25k in 1990, asks if you’ll be “wanting one of your hipster avocados” instead of brussels sprouts.
Luke’s message is for every house guest spending Christmas Eve on a blow-up mattress in a utility room, next to 20kg of maris piper spuds and a bag of turkey giblets: remember that the Little Lord knew lowly accommodation, too. Luke speaks to everyone outside of TV chef land who doesn’t own a four-door Smeg American fridge-freezer with a 643 litre capacity and will, instead, be keeping spare trifles in their car boot.
Carol: Away In A Manger, author unknown
The seventh lesson: the shepherds go to the manger. Luke 2
The shepherds are an integral part of any nativity play. High-impact players; not just tiny people wearing tea towels, waving Shaun the Sheep toys, but representatives of a message about Christmas being for everyone of every budget, not just the rich or royal.
It’s OK to be “a bit common” at Christmas. In fact it’s preferable. Spare a thought for the former Meghan Markle, consigned to a lifetime of formal festive seasons spent at Windsor. She’ll never know the joy of Jus-Rol vol-au-vent stuffed with Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup washed down with a bottle of Asti spumante.
In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Scrooge is forced to watch Bob Cratchit’s common-as-muck family dinner to show us that a roast goose and mashed spuds is all you need when you are with people you love. “Bah, humbug” perhaps. But this is balm to all hosts feeling inadequate because they’re not making a 16-ingredient apricot stuffing from scratch. Give everyone Paxo sage & onion. It’s the nation’s dirty secret that we absolutely prefer it.
Carol: Let’s Go, Let’s Go (Shepherds’ Song) from Maynard’s Groovy Bible
The eighth lesson: the wise men are led by the star to Jesus. Matthew 2
The three kings show up at the stable with gifts, presumably causing their hosts to panic-buy something in return, followed by rictus grins of fake delight all round as the presents are unwrapped.
I do not enjoy receiving gifts. It’s stressful and exposing. Be gone with your video-phone recording of my expression as I unwrap an Ikea spice rack and the memoir of a British Bake Off also-ran.
My mother has bought me the same Russell Hobbs hand blender three times. My worst fear is foodie “experience” gifts that I’ll be under pressure to report back on for the next 12 months. Posh afternoon teas with “a glass of bubbles” in chintzy hellholes. An afternoon “learning butchery skills” or, more accurately, hacking at a carcass with a bunch of randoms. Pointless, space-hogging gifts must surely have had their day; the chief reason baby boomers can’t give up their mansions is because they’d have nowhere to house an artillery of never-used slow cookers, sorbet chillers and bread-making machines.
Carol: All I Want For Christmas Is You, by Mariah Carey
The ninth lesson: St John unfolds the great mystery of the Incarnation. John 1
This lesson is on the ecstasy of the post-Christmas period. It’s about the joy found in a motorway services Greggs steak bake on the 28th as you drive away from your in-laws. A steak bake eaten entirely on your own schedule, without need for festive small talk.
If you’re lucky, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve can be heaven on earth; a delicious, somnambulant fug of all-day dressing gown wearing and breakfast croquembouche with Tia Maria coffee (bravely stemming global waste, a meal at a time). But be sure that, with the festive period put to bed, it’s time to look forward, cough, to Veganuary, Sober January and endless “New Year, New You” juicing plans.
In 1993, my family cut straight to the chase by giving me themed Christmas gifts of an exercise bike, a set of electronic scales, a pocket “Calories Explained” almanac and a tracksuit. I did not need Bletchley Park to crack this code. When St John speaks of the coming of the “true light, that lighteth every man”, he was talking about your 5am alarm on January the 2nd. You can plan Christmas 2019 as you do your 10,000 steps.
Carol: I Wonder As I Wander, by John Jacob Niles