The most wonderful meal of the year
EVERY year, magazines promise ‘a Christmas like no other’—proof, if any were needed, that we should perhaps be a little more careful what we wish for in future. How many of us, 12 months ago, could have imagined we’d be considering carving (and eating) the turkey in the garden? Or Googling ‘how to get eggnog out of a mask’? Of course, celebrations that swerve from the mistletoe-decked norm aren’t uncommon, even if they don’t get as much coverage. Now, for the first time since the Second World War, the entire country is gearing up for a bittersweet December 25.
How, then, to cook up comfort and joy when absences, worry and confusion can cast such a long shadow? I decided I’d turn to some literary Christmases for guidance, but, reaching for my favourites, I couldn’t help but feel that some were putting the boot in a bit. ‘This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings,’ Mr Elton purrs in Emma , larding it on further by declaring that ‘at Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather’. All right, Philip, we get the picture.
I had more luck with Charles Dickens —not (we can do without you this year, Tiny Tim), but In it, he muses on the power of the big day to take us somewhere that isn’t the imperfect here and now. ‘Happy, happy Christmas,’
