I woke up this morning, and realised that it was Christmas Day. I remember how exciting that felt as a child, knowing that the pillowcase at the end of the bed would be bulging with interesting packages. I am not that excited nowadays, but it was a pleasant thought that it was Christmas. It was warm in bed, and I lingered before I got up. Newspaper websites have been stuffed full with articles about what to wear for Christmas day, and whether novelty jumpers can be worn ironically, or simply worn. I detest novelty jumpers. If you are spending Christmas at home where your pets will clamber on you, and planning to enter a kitchen at some point, then there is no point in wearing anything that will make you stressed about getting cat hair or cooking splashes on it. I put on a pair of velvet trousers that started off several years ago as trousers to wear to other people's houses, and are now worn at home, but only when guests are present or for special occasions, and a newish t-shirt with a neck low enough that I can wear the necklace the Systems Administrator gave me for my birthday. That's only possible at this time of the year because we have cranked the heating up for the holiday, otherwise the necklace would be buried under layers of sweaters.
The newspapers have also been full of articles by journalists saying that Christmas is really for children, as if people without them shouldn't give each other presents, or enjoy themselves. Presumably these writers have children, and have fallen into the trap of believing that everyone else should be like them. But our Christmas has evolved its own customs and traditions, which we follow and enjoy. The fact that it isn't child centred doesn't create a void, it just makes it different. After the SA had put up the greenery, I brought out the festive red tablecloth, which we always have on the table at Christmas, though after many years of use it is stained with drips of candle wax that don't come out in the wash. On top of the red tablecloth goes the traditional white lace cloth. Christmas cards that won't fit anywhere else, and those that have been evicted from the mantelpiece, go at the far end of the table, with the giant candle. I discovered what was wrong with that, which was that a great wall of wax had built up round the outside as the centre burned down to the point where the flame began to run out of air, while the wick had fallen into the wet wax the last time it was used and entombed itself. I trimmed the surplus edges, excavated the wick, and it will be fine. I put fresh candles in the candelabra (it's pressed metal from Ikea, nothing grand) and rather wobbly hand-dipped by me beeswax candles in the iron candlesticks, ready for the next day. It all looked very pretty.
Ten minutes later the big tabby knocked over the jug of alstroemerias, causing a flood that needed three towels to mop it up, and we had to eat our traditional Christmas Eve steak and chips off a damp tablecloth. There was still a towel wedged underneath, so you had to be careful not to put your wineglass on the slope where it stopped.
Before supper we listened to a CD reissue of an album Frost and Fire by the Watersons. It was first released in 1965, and my father had a copy on vinyl when I was growing up. We listen to this every Christmas Eve without fail, though never during the rest of the year. Other folk groups have attempted that kind of a capella harmony singing since the Watersons, and none have matched their wild brilliance. Frost and Fire is an antidote to all the media wails about how Christianity has been squeezed out of the modern Christmas. Sorry guys, but human beings have been celebrating the turning of the year during the depths of winter since long before Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene. Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on Christmas.
After the Watersons we listened to Thea Gilmore's superb Strange Communion, which has become part of the Christmas tradition since I heard a song from it on the radio a few year's back and bought the album. The lyrics of one track are a reading of an extract from Lous MacNeice's Autumn Journal, and by a strange coincidence in the same year that I bought the album I also suggested the book to my mother when she asked me what I'd like for Christmas, again on the back of hearing an extract from it on Radio 4. Then I snuck in a highbrow Advent from Saint Paul's on the Hyperion label while the Systems Administrator was cooking the supper, and after supper the SA went completely off-message with the Second South Carolina String Band, which is not traditional. The American Civil War doesn't have anything to do with Christmas, the SA just felt like listening to it.
The SA is now composing the timetable for cooking lunch. We are having chicken, not turkey, since neither of us is especially keen on turkey, and a whole turkey is too large for two people even if they like turkey to start with. The chicken is larger than the SA is used to cooking, and the SA has suspiciously checked the suggested cooking time on the packaging with the formula for chicken roasting times in the Aga book. Part of the point of the timetable is so that the triumphant appearance of lunch is not spoiled by my demanding to know where the chestnut stuffing is, and the SA's shamed admission that it didn't get cooked. I don't think this has actually happened, though there have been years when lunch has been delayed by the SA's horrified discovery of some key ingredient that didn't go in the oven when it should have. There was a year when I bought red currant jelly by mistake, instead of cranberry, which upset me more than the SA, who can take cranberry sauce or leave it. My contribution will be to peel the sprouts, which have made the spare room smell faintly of cabbage, and make the rum butter. There was a year when I followed the book and added lemon juice and nutmeg, and it tasted disagreeably of lemons and nutmeg. Nowadays I only use butter, sugar and rum.
Lunch will probably be on the late side, since the timetable always seems to slip, but that doesn't matter. Afterwards we will not go for a walk. My parents believed in a walk after lunch, and have tried dragging us out when staying here for Christmas. Indeed I think I may have capitulated. But really and truly, after a large and late lunch neither of us feels like walking, and the walks around the lettuce farm at this time of year consist of vistas of muddy fields. If you walk far enough you can get to the local woods, and watch the leafless trees drip. Better to sit in front of the fire. We won't watch a film on Christmas Day, though we might tomorrow night with the traditional Boxing Day cheese fest, and we don't watch TV, so there will be no arguing over the remote control. The SA will record Downton Abbey to watch tomorrow sans adverts, squeezed in among the Boxing Day racing coverage, though it is pretty tricky to avoid the plot giveaways in the Telegraph following each episode of Downton. My money was on Matthew Crawley being killed in a Boxing Day shooting accident, if they have to write him out, but I am beginning to suspect that
Dan Stevens will do another series, and has just been spoofing his fans for the publicity, once the will-he won't-he with Lady Mary was sorted out.
The stollen was fine, by the way. I have just eaten a piece for breakfast. The dough didn't rise as much as my friend's bread dough, but I assume that was the effect of the butter and egg dragging it down. It is very difficult to judge whether a stollen is cooked or not, when it is exuding melted marzipan from both ends, and it looked horribly unpromising when it came out of the oven, since the sultanas nearest the outside had broken free of the rather loose dough to stand proud like ticks on the cat, and then burned. I picked them off, but couldn't dust the stollen with icing sugar because I discovered I didn't have any. I used the last bit of it to shake on the bees, to encourage them to groom themselves and so remove varroa mites.
The Systems Administrator is now laying the fire in the sitting room, following which we will prep the vegetables. Have a good Christmas yourself.
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