Advent Day Three

Hello Friends!

Let's talk about the Christmas Siege.

If there's one thing I remember about Christmas as a child growing up in Wales {if you don't count the gathering crescendo of uncontrollable excitement culminating in being overwhelmed with anticipation by Christmas morning} it's the months of preparation and the steady flow of food that arrived in the house throughout December.  Enough food to feed a small village for about a month.

Looking back on it now, it was crazy overkill, and people still do it today, only today the sad fact is the debt that will be incurred by so many as the buying frenzy commences.  Thankfully, not going into debt was part of my mother's planning, for there were Clubs and there were the boxes of money in the sideboard.

I wonder if our predisposition to stocking up for Christmas stems back to some primordial subconscious state of mind when winter was a lean and hungry time for all?

Every week, money was divided up between the boxes in the sideboard, each one being designated to a different area of housekeeping, for example, a box for electricity, another for the coal merchant, the Rates and Water Rates had a designated box, so did the milkman, and so on.  It was one way of saving for paying bills or simply setting money aside for a purpose.  One such box was marked CHRISTMAS and that one held my childlike attention the most.  Into this box went the spare money that would pay for Christmas fripperies that were not covered by clubs.

To that end I had better explain what a Club was.  Most shops in the village had a Christmas Club.  The Butcher, every Greengrocer, the Tobacconist, the Newsagent.  Come one, Come all!  It was a useful way of saving to make sure a good Christmas was had without going into debt in January as it would all be paid for from the Clubs.  Each shop kept a ledger and each customer who opted in to the Club had a page in the ledger and they also had a little booklet or card which they kept in their wallet.  Once a week, a few spare pennies or shillings was handed over to the shopkeeper who documented the exchange on your page in the ledger and marked off your card.  Over the course of the year, hopefully enough money would be paid into the various Clubs to pay for Christmas in full.  

Even as a child, I had my own Club in the Tobacconist and the Newsagents where I would put pennies from my Pocket Money aside each week to buy gifts of cigarettes and chocolates for my parents and grandmother.  Of course, adult supervision was needed at the Tobacconist!

And so the year went by, until mid November, when the window displays in shops took on a seasonal, festive feel.  Sprigs of holly decorated boxes of the exotic fruits that we could only get at Christmas: satsumas, clementines, dates, figs, nuts of all kinds still in the shell.  Garlands of tinsel pinned, shimmering onto the shelves at the grocers that were filling up with seasonal baking ingredients, luxury foods and delicacies, signs encouraging people to order their turkeys and beef appeared in the butcher's window, but most exciting of all was the Newsagent's windows.  Overnight, as if fairies had been at work through the dark hours when all good children are in bed, the windows were transformed with toys and books of every sort imaginable, and selection boxes of our favourite sweet treats. The following weeks were pure torture as we walked past the windows twice a day on our way to and home from school, stopping to stare and point in fervent hope the doll or that book would be under the tree on Christmas morning.

I fear I have waffled on enough!  Yet I have not even begun to address the Seige.  If you are still awake, why not refresh your tea and get another slice of cake?

In October boxes of British grown apples had arrived and were put into storage in the bottom of wardrobes in the bedrooms.  Four or five large, earthenware crocks filled to the brim with pickled onions were put up in the pantry.  Tinned hams, tins of red salmon, and rows of tinned fruit also lined the pantry shelves.  Some time earlier, dried fruits had been soaked for a fortnight in a mixture of spirits, such as brandy, rum, and port had been carefully combined with many eggs, pounds of butter, sugar, and flour as the large 12" square slab of fruit cake was baked for many hours before being wrapped in tin foil and fed with brandy every week until the week before Christmas.  That foil wrapped beauty was also in the pantry.  

By the end of November, things stepped up a gear as Clubs were cashed in, and the money saved was spent on every possible confection, luxury, sweet treat and savoury one could imagine!  These delicacies began to arrive in the house!  One box of chocolates was not enough, oh, no! we seemed to have one box of everything, marching into the house like a one sided Noah's Ark of confectionery. The boxes came in one by one!  Rose and Lemon Turkish Delight, Newbury Fruits, After Eights {even though we knew Aunty Lily would always give a box of After Eights, we still bought one} boxes of all three flavours of Matchmakers, Milk Tray, Quality Street, Roses, Black Magic, Dairy Box, Terry's All Gold, Rose and Violet Creams, soft caramels, hard caramels, toffees, Neapolitans, and more. There was always a tin of Scottish All Butter Shortbread, and a large tin of assorted fancy biscuits, and a box or two of Kunzel cakes.  A chocolate Yule Log appeared, complete with plastic robin.  Then came the exotic nuts in their shells, Brazils, hazelnuts, walnuts, peanuts, and more, to be joined with the even more exotic dried figs, dates, and glace fruits, along with sugared almonds, cherries soaked in brandy and enrobed in rich dark chocolate {fruit or confection?} chocolate liqueurs,  Ah! Chocolate liqueurs, the perfect segue to the imminent arrival, a few days before Christmas, of the order from Bennett's of Fishguard.  Cases of wine, bottles of brandy, sherry and port lined the hallway along with cans and bottle of lager and beer, and a bottle of Campari, Dubonnet and Martini Bianco, as well as Babycham and Cherry B, not long followed by the order from Corona of lemonade, dandelion and burdock, ginger beer, cherryade and cream soda.  Things began to get tight as treats vied with one another for space to be stored!  Two days before Christmas, the perishable foodstuffs such as fresh vegetables, satsumas and pears, sprouts, extra milk, cream and cheeses arrived to be stored in the cool of the pantry, and then on Christmas Eve the turkey, beef and pork roasts arrived from the butcher.

Christmas Eve found me in bed, nearly being sick with excitement, while my mother and grandmother  set out the dishes of sweets on the sideboard, and filled the Lazy Susan with figs and dates, Turkish delight and more, conveniently placed on the end table by the sofa.  Quality Street and Roses were put in dishes to be offered to callers.  The boxes of "better" chocolates were kept in the sideboard, out of sight to be shared by the family.  They would then move operations into the kitchen and begin the preparation of enough vegetables for a week, and starting the daunting task of cooking the turkey, beef and pork.  Somewhere in all of this my mother had marzipaned and iced the fruit cake, which now sat in pride of place on the sideboard in the front room, baked dozens of mince pies, and for the grand finale of tea on Boxing Day, a huge bowl of trifle.

This picture was repeated in nearly every home.  Houses stocked to the gills with luxuries enough to keep you going until Easter, or, as I called it, The Two Day Siege.  A stranger, unaccustomed to our ways, would never have guessed the shops would be open again on December 27th!  Heaven forbid  came a caller to your home and you didn't have something to offer by way of a drink and some food!

While all this was going on, children were opening their Advent Calendars, counting down the days that passed by so slowly.  Today, I have cut back, my house is no longer stocked up for a siege, but I still honour the tradition of an Advent Calendar.

Here are today's photos

Until tomorrow . . .