1425.....

"AT CHRISTMAS  all roads lead home." -David Cameron

The house where I grew up. 1425 Fairfield. Used to be known as the "Christmas House", or so my dad called it. My mother would just sniff at that.  A vacant  shell of itself years later.  Christmas long past.  It was  a modest box house. Set amongst a forest. That forest is long gone now. Other homes  bloom beside it.  Great trees that used to be, are no longer. But I know them. I wonder if they would remember me.....

Those first Christmases  at 1425 were scorching hot. A new Coal and Wood stove heated the house and cooked the fruitcakes.  One Christmas there was a fire in the stove pipe.  My mother beat out the flames on the wall with a wet dish rag and a dish pan full of soapy water. The scorch marks were there many years later. 

  Another Christmas the old stove was taken out and a new electric oven installed. My mother didn't trust it. She  cooked on a Coleman burner outside for weeks, till the gas ran out around New Year's. She used to dry underwear inside the oven, till they scorched.

That year, Christmas dinner for eight hungry humans, was hamburgers and french fries. AND her hard as rock plum pudding.  She used to boil that thing till it turned into a bowling ball. The women set the table, while the   men smoked outside. The smoke hung in drifts outside the back door. Cigarette butts stuck out of the small patches of snow, left by some ancient storm. My mother used to collect those butts when everyone was gone.

When the  fire burned low my mother took it upon herself to hike up to  chop wood. I saw her doing that, well into her 70's. She'd march through the men smoking on the back steps, grab an ax, hoist up her skirts and trudge  to the back of the property. The men were told not to stir themselves.  They just blew rings of smoke and chuckled.

You could hear the chop chop hack of the ax  from the kitchen.   My mother  plopped  the wood into a piece of burlap and dragged it back to the house. Then hauedl piece after piece  into the living room to stoke the fire. The men just chuckled and smoked. Cigarette butts everywhere.

The Grandfather clock rang out announcing the start of  the radio broadcast of Messiah. It was a new clock then. Old clock now. It still rings the hours and moments. Every year, at 1425, would see everyone  sitting in a ring.   After  the Hallelujah Chorus it was time for a  smoke  break. More cigarette butts to gather, as people hurried home. 

Years later, my  mother told me stories, late at night, about driving the cutter on the farm.  In the snow. In the cold. Deep cold. On Christmas Day. Blankets, cushions, hot bricks to keep their feet warm,

Driving so fast the horse broke the reins, one Christmas morning causing the cutter to slide  into a ditch, and the horse, named Sandy, to bolt back to the farm.  No harm was done. They laughed and squealed , till they could laugh no more.  Then raced back up the lane to get Sandy, so he could  pull the cutter home.  All roads lead home. 

The last year my grandmother was alive was 1956. Never knew her.  I knew she and my grandfather had come from the farm to live with my parents. 1425 was a full place by then.  My grandmother did not like her picture taken. Said it was unnatural. Insisted on wearing new hose and new shoes, then she changed her dress and had my mother  pin up her hair. Then changed her shoes again. Grandfather draped himself beside her, fragrant pipe smoke drifted from his nostrils. Then it was evening.

Candles were lit. Tough old plum pudding   washed down with sherry.  Christmas Eve was quiet. Filled with someone reading Dickens aloud. Stockings hung by the hearth. Lumps of coal  shoved into the bottom, with an orange in the toe. Socks and underwear filling out the middle  A small paper bag of prunes on the top ...reindeer food....

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"The best of all gifts around any tree, the presence of a family wrapped up in each other. " -Burton Hills

There have been many houses in the years.  But I still see 1425 . Small and  quiet  in the forest, where trees  grew, where  people lingered ,  and cigarette butts were left.It's smoke stained kitchen,  and the electric stove where my mother burned oatmeal . The ax  on the hearth. 

I still see my mother opening her house to anyone who came calling.  I still see her chopping wood in any weather. I see her handing people coal at New Year's telling them to bring it in and bring good fortune. I see her stirring plum pudding and fruit cake, neither of which was edible.

There is without a doubt she offered  the best seat in the house. Right by the fire. Guests found dozing.   There'd be music and kind conversation, shortbread, treats and that ever present tea, sometimes laced with sherry, sometimes not. Mincemeat tarts so hot you'd burn your fingers on the pastry.

The smoking parties  vanished in time.  Ashtrays now held scotch mints  in every room of the house. My mother preserved my father's tin of tobacco, with his cigarette papers,  along with his smoking jacket , in a corner of her closet. Every so often she'd bury her nose in  that jacket. She'd say, years later, that  it still reminded her of him. Standing there in the night, with the others. His laughter ringing out. She liked to remember that.

Every Christmas eve,  1425 shared a spread of cheeses and crackers, sherry, wine, coffee, pickles, smoked oysters, sweets galore, fruitcake, hot mince tarts, shortbread , frosted strawberries, and that infamous Plum Pudding, for the friends who dropped in. And they came. One after another. Faithfully friends. To sit by the fire. To warm their hands.  To laugh and  remember the years. To speak of the past and of the future. To wait for the moment of the Watch night. It was their  road home. To hear the Grandfather clock ring out  Joy,  on each dark Christmas morning, that beamed with Light..........

 Photographs 2022

STIR UP SUNDAY

"Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling." -Edna Ferber

Third weekend in November, my mother would go on a shopping spree.

Stir Up Sunday was close at hand. The last weekend she could make plum puddings or fruitcake before Advent. 

It was known as Stir up Sunday. She took it seriously by laying  out mixing bowls, softened butter, and paper bags for lining cake pans.

She’d  buy crazy amounts of raisins,  brown sugar, eggs, apples, butter, flour, spices, baking powder, currants, almonds, breadcrumbs, 10 pounds of prunes, orange juice apricots and a good whollop of brandy to mush in.

Company was coming for tea the next day. Stuffy ladies, looking for donations. Two sisters, Mrs. Wig  and Mrs. Wog (not their real names, of course) They always   wore little hats with netting over their eyes.

In the kitchen ,flour  flew, and eggs were cracked and brandy spilled this way and that. 

My mother and I took turns with the stirring. Clockwise, while making a wish. That’s  how it was done on Stir Up Sunday.

We cut up paper bags, slathered butter into pans, then smooshed more butter onto brown paper, which we slotted into  dark pans. Pans that used to belong to my grandmother. Only used at Christmas.

My mother plopped  batter into the pudding mold. She covered it with  foil and dropped it  into  boiling water. It bubbled and burped and burped and bubbled.

Next day , as the grandfather clock chimed 2pm ,my mother had the kettle perking. Hot scones wrapped in linen, huge hot mincemeat tarts, enough to scald your mouth. Preserves warmed by the fire ready to be devoured.

Large slices of dark fruitcake  graced the antique cake stand.  Tall  corners of Plum Pudding swimming in thick cream and sugar sat beside each  place by the fire. Our tabby cat perched himself  by us, hoping for a treat.

Mrs. Wig and Mrs. Wog arrived on time. Starving , they said, eyeing the goodies. Positively famished.

Mrs. Wig smacked her lips as she swallowed a mincemeat tart  practically whole. 

Mrs. Wog  was the fun one. She had false teeth in front that rattled. She took them out. Placed them on the side of her teacup and saucer. My mother’s eyes widened  as she poured tea from her shaking hand.

“Quite yummy” said the two ladies. They left their little hats on top of their heads and just pushed up the netting so as to get more tea. They gobbled up scones thick with butter and jam. Ooohed and ahhed at the plum pudding, before digging in.

My mother indicated  I would play Christmas carols for their enjoyment. Operative word “their” enjoyment. I scraped away on violin. I plunked away on piano, while the ladies  made appropriate noises. It was torture.

All of a sudden there was a “crunch”. Not a nice crunch. I stopped playing.

Mrs. Wig  looked rather alarmed. She spat a small silver thimble into her tea cup, plus part of a tooth.

Turns out Mrs. Wig found the special silver thimble, a wish for thrift, on Stir Up Sunday. My mother stuffed it into the pudding batter.  A  Special thimble  wrapped in foil. Or rather, it found her. Mrs. Wig commenced with  some interesting  screeching noises.

Mrs. Wog gulped her tea and giggled, followed by horrible gagging sounds.  In her zeal to eat everything  in sight, she bit on a  prune pit and her false teeth fell off the tea cup,  and clattered  onto the hearth. 

Our cat, who had been snoozing  by the fire, grabbed it, and ran off . I toddled after him.  

The sisters laughed  hysterically. Asked for more tea and more plum pudding . 

They left without a donation. Just their teeth , wrapped in foil…..

Photographs 2022