and easy to deal with. They are the heart of many a Scandinavian and Japanese home, and are becoming popular in Britain too. A wood-burner has a constant glow, the low golden flame that greets and warms and toasts us. It is my next project.
Fire has always been precious, particularly when it was the only form of heating or cooking. Therefore taxable. In 1662, on May 19, a hearth tax was introduced, where householders had to pay two shillings for each hearth. Payment was twice a year, once at Michaelmas and again at Lady Day, March 25. The poor and charitable institutions were exempt. The tax was abolished by William III in 1689. Good for him.
For me the cold months are the best of times. And at the heart of those months lies Christmas.
Celebrating Christmas
Christmas is celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike. It is a cultural event as much as a religious one, and its history is confused. Many of the festival’s observances date from pre-Christian times, and those who celebrate it as a purely religious event might be surprised to find how much of the festivities hails from pagan times. We celebrated winter long before we celebrated Christmas. (Saturnalia was the Roman festival in honour of the God Saturn, with feasting lasting from December 17 to the 23rd.) Happily atheist, I celebrate Christmas as much as anyone, with food and gifts and, yes, carols, but I fully accept that much of my own celebration has a religious history.
I go along with the religious details of Christmas because they have become interwoven with the cultural side of the festivities. The Nativity is as much a part of Christmas as Santa Claus and the pagan habit of bringing holly and mistletoe into the house. It is almost impossible to separate the pagan from the pious, and why would I want to anyway when December 25 was chosen simply because it landed in the middle of what was already a pagan festival?
Christmas is a vast steaming pudding of Christianity, folklore, paganism, tradition and commerce. Those of us who are part of a tolerant, open-minded and intelligent society can make our Christmas whatever we want it to be. To put it another way, we can have our cake and eat it.
The best of Christmases, the worst of Christmases
We tend to remember Christmases with exemplary clarity. Something unusual that happens over these twelve days at the heart of winter is unlikely ever to be forgotten. Even the most innocent event is almost guaranteed to be re-lived with a certain annual glee. My own catalogue of unlikely Yuletide events has involved a Christmas Eve where I forgot to tell the family I was coming home, only to find they had left for the week (I was taken in, waif-like, by generous neighbours). The year the cake sat half-iced because I had run out of icing sugar. The Christmas morning I realised the goose was too long for the oven and had to be cut in half. Then there was the time the cats pulled the ten-foot tree on to the floor, smashing my much-loved collection of decorations (and frightening the life out of themselves into the bargain). Then there was the Christmas Mum died.
For me Christmas is the heart and soul of the cold months, the jewel in the crown of midwinter, a time to feast and to give. But it is, after all is said and done, just a few days that sit at the heart of the season. Three months of our year in which to offer warmth, welcome and something good to eat to all.
A toast to the winter solstice
‘What can I get you to drink?’ Never has a simple question been so bursting with delicious possibilities. The word ‘welcome’ put instantly, joyously into motion.
It is true, I do love pouring someone a drink. In my time I have worked in a country pub (all gumboots, roaring fires and golden labradors) and behind the bar of a grande dame five-star hotel. You probably didn’t know that. Whether it is as simple as a cup of coffee, a beer served in a small, ice-cold glass or a home-made fruit liqueur that has been steeping in my pantry for six weeks, I get quite a buzz handing someone a glass of ‘welcome’.
Drinks are different in winter. I often want something sweeter, darker and more alcoholic when the weather is cold. This is the only time of year I have a fancy for sweet wines, by which I mean the muscats and Pedro Ximénez sherries, the fruit-based eau-de-vie of quince and plum and the sloe gin that light up the drinks cupboard like the stained-glass window at Midnight Mass.
There are drinks I make especially for a winter’s night. A tiny glass of apricot brandy, glowing like a candle, the fruit steeping quietly for a month with orange zest and star anise. A liqueur made with dried figs and fennel seed, and another of sticky prunes in sweet wine. Served very cold, in diminutive glasses, the drinks warm, soothe and delight. The other contenders are the hot drinks, the mulled ciders and spiced mixtures. Drinks that will melt anybody’s frost.
The best known of cold-weather tipples is probably the least well regarded. I speak of mulled wine. I like the idea of this ancient winter ritual (the instant bonhomie of sweet spices, rosy cheeks and hot red wine) more than the drink itself. Wonderful, I think, is a spiced punch of hot cider or apple juice. This is the drink whose cinnamon-scented fumes fill the air on Guy Fawkes Night, Hallowe’en and in many of Europe’s Christmas markets. The stir-up of ingredients – baked apples, brandy, cider, cloves, cinnamon and allspice – actually makes sense. A drink with a winter nose and too good to be left for wassailing. I shall start right here.
A hot apple drink for a cold night
Slice an apple in half, then into quarters, discard the core and pips, then cut each piece of apple into two thick segments. Warm 3 tablespoons of apple juice in a shallow pan, add 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and lower in the apples. Let them cook until soft, stopping before they fall apart. Remove from the heat.
In a deep, stainless steel saucepan put 100ml of brandy, 400ml of cloudy apple juice, a clementine, 3 cloves, a stick of cinnamon, 3 allspice berries gently bashed with a heavy weight and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, so the cooking continues at a gentle bubble for fifteen minutes. Ladle into four glasses, dropping a few of the cooked apple slices into each drink.
A welcoming drink, may I suggest, is not just about other people. Something good in a glass can be a rather lovely way to welcome our own arrival home. God knows, we deserve it. Finding a rare moment of peace and quiet, there are surely few greater joys than pouring ourselves a drink as we curl up on the sofa with a book after a long hard day. It might only be a stolen few minutes, but I regard this time as deeply grounding. Something that, just for once, is about no one but ourselves.
I was brought up in a family that drank sherry. Not a chilled manzanilla with a dish of crisp, salty almonds or an amontillado the colour of amber, but Bristol Cream sherry, sweet as fudge. We drank it from a glass called a schooner and had it with Twiglets (in the days when Twiglets were long and thin, rather than dumpy and puffed up with air as they are now). Occasionally there would be a bottle of Italian fizz and at Christmas my father would make snowballs with advocaat and maraschino cherries for everyone. To this day I would hardly call myself much of a drinker, but pouring something into a glass for someone remains one of life’s pleasures.
This week seems a prudent time to put drinks down for Christmas and the chilly weeks that follow. There are few fresh fruits, save the pear and the quince, that will make a fruit liqueur dazzling enough to show its face in candlelight at Christmas. So I turn to the store cupboard, and especially to the stoppered jars of dried fruits, the ‘Christmas pudding fruits’, to make drinks that will shine a light on the dark nights.
The suggestions that follow are meant for any cold night but are particularly useful at Christmas. I also include uses for the fruits that remain after the liquor has been drunk. Fat, alcohol-soaked little fruits, each one pissed as a newt, that can be served as dessert.
Three
