This month I decided to do two new things.  One to finally get my feet wet in the vast ocean of blogging and two to make a Christmas cake.

I have been fascinated with the concept of blogging, yet I never felt the need to dive in until I decided to make a Christmas cake.  As Christmas is approaching I felt moved to write about a family tradition, and to share it with all of you who might feel a little nostalgic at this time of the year.

First, let me tell you I have never really been a fan of “The Christmas Cake”.  In fact it was a source of many jokes and banters at my home in Ireland when my mother would declare it was time to make the cake. We knew the process had begun when one of the tins were produced.  The “Quality Street” tin for the round cake, and the “Jacobs Biscuit” tin for the square cake.  We waited with anticipation to see which tin would emerge before we knew the geometry of the much-ridiculed confection.  This process began several months before Christmas, and we joked that the Christmas cake would be the only food that survived a nuclear disaster.  Mum would smile at our banter and continue with the time honored tradition of soaking the fruit in the best of Brandy, making the Marzipan coating and lastly putting on the icing that was harder than the proverbial Blarney stone.  To keep the cake “moist” copious amounts of additional brandy or whiskey was added though holes poked with surgical precision at weekly intervals.

From December to January and beyond, callers were served the Christmas cake and tea, while murmuring compliments such as “Best Cake ever” “You’ve outdone yourself this year Winnie”.  All between what I perceived as sweet, alcohol filled and overbearingly heavy bites.  The ensuing conversation would turn to who was doing what, how the children had grown and such niceties. The occasional once a year visitor felt welcomed and would occasionally glance at the tin that held what I now realize was much more than a cake.  It was familiarity in a changing world, a constant from year to year.

My mother stopped making Christmas cakes the year after my two brothers and I left our family home.  We started our own families and traditions, which my mother gladly shared.  However in a strange and surprising way Christmas did not feel the same to me.  The tins went into storage and although many traditions continued the one that I had made the most fun of left a hole, or many holes, in the preparations.

Callers were now treated to home made scones or apple pie, and though they appreciated these substitute salutes to the season they would ask “Winnie, where is your Christmas cake?  We always associate your Cake with Christmas.”  My Mum would smile and say “Sure, there is no one around to eat it anymore, and really who actually liked it besides myself and the polite few who wouldn’t say no if it were poison I was giving them.”  My mother had a wonderful colorful way with words; was she aware of the fact that these were the “Polite few” she was referring to? Or that by foregoing her cake making she was inadvertently relinquishing her role as keeper of Christmas past.  I feel it was her unique way of saying that everything has a season, and that creating “The Christmas Cake” was now being handed down to another generation.

I had forgotten about the “The Christmas cake” until recently when I was surrounded by a group of Irish women who, like me, had moved to America.  The subject of Christmas cake came up as we shared the traditions from home.  I felt a strong desire to connect to my past, the long forgotten tradition of making a Christmas cake.  I wanted to recreate that memory as a grown woman.  I looked forward to poking holes in the dense consistency of the cake and giving it the jolt needed to survive, for the “Polite Few” that I will serve it to.

I know that my mother will be laughing at me from above, as now my three children will fill the kitchen with their barbs and jokes about the cake and grudgingly take a bite and ask, “Who actually eats this?” I will smile and know the most amazing woman I ever knew did, my mother.  A piece of my Mum came alive again as I read her handwritten recipe, and poured all the love and of course brandy into the cake.  Who knows maybe I will actually grow to like that cake.  If not I will always cherish the making of it.  I wonder what is your “Christmas cake”?