Christmas Days Read online

  The Spirit of Christmas was looking very pleased with herself.

  We jumped in the car and followed the sledge as best we could, though it took the direct route across the fields.

  ‘It’s some kind of jet-pack hovercraft,’ you said. ‘How did we get into this?’

  Now we were off the little road and bouncing up a track that was killing the car’s suspension. You had both hands on the wheel.

  The sledge came to land. A few minutes later we caught up.

  We were outside a dark and wind-broken cottage. The roof tiles were slipping and the gutter was hung with icicles, like the electric ones people buy as decorations, except that these icicles weren’t electric and they weren’t decorations. The fence stakes round the house were tied together with bits of wire and the gate was propped shut with a stone. An old dog slept in the open doorway of a disused caravan.

  As the dog raised his head to bark, Santa Claus threw a glittering bone through the air. The old dog caught it contentedly.

  While the reindeer ate moss from their nosebags, Santa and the Spirit of Christmas went to the house and opened the front door.

  ‘Is this a trap? Like Don’t Look Now? Are we going to be killed?’ You were scared. I wasn’t scared but that was because I believed in this.

  Santa came out of the cottage, stooping slightly under the weight of a moth-eaten bag. He was holding a mince pie and a glass of whisky.

  ‘Not many people leave anything these days,’ he said, downing the whisky in one, ‘but I know this house and they know me. Pain and Want must vanish tonight. Once a year is all the power I am given.’

  ‘What power?’ you said. ‘Where’s the child? What have you done with my cat?’

  Santa gestured back at the cottage, its windows lit up now with the strange green that accompanied the child. We could see quite clearly, even at a distance, that the table had a clean cloth on it and the child was arranging a ham, a pie, cheese, while our cat, Hackles, purred about with his tail in the air.

  Santa smiled, and tipped the sack onto the sledge. What fell out was musty and old and broken. He picked up the pieces of a plate, a torn jacket, a doll without a head. Now the sack was empty.

  Without speaking, he offered the empty sack to you and ­pointed towards the car. He wants you to fill it, I thought. Do it, please; do it.

  But I didn’t dare to say this out loud. This was for you. About you.

  You hesitated, and then you opened all the doors of the car and started pushing presents and food into the sack. It was only a small sack, but no matter how much you put into it, you couldn’t fill it. I could see you looking at what was left.

  ‘Give him everything,’ I said.

  You leaned over and started taking things from the back seat. The car was almost empty now, except for the wicker reindeer, and that seemed too ridiculous to give to anybody.

  You handed the heavy sack to the red figure, who was watching you intently.

  ‘You haven’t given me everything,’ he said.

  ‘If you mean the wicker reindeer . . . ’

  The Spirit of Christmas had come out of the house now, Hackles in her arms. He was glowing green too. I had never seen a green cat.

  The child said to you, ‘Give him what you fear.’

  The moment was still, utterly still. I looked away like I did when I asked you to marry me, not knowing what you would say.

  ‘Yes,’ you said. ‘Yes.’

  There was a terrific thud and the bag fell to the ground in a great weight. Santa nodded, and with some difficulty picked up the sack and threw it onto the sledge.

  ‘It’s time to go now,’ said the Spirit of Christmas.

  We got in the car and drove back along the track.

  The frost had brightened the ground and hardened the stars. Beyond the dry-stone walls, the sheep were in huddles in the fields. A pair of hunting horses ran along the side of the fence, their breath steaming like dragons’.

  After a while you stopped and got out. I followed you. I put my arms round you. I could hear your heart beating.

  ‘What shall we do now that we’ve given it all away?’ you said.

  ‘Haven’t we got anything left?’

  ‘A bag of food behind the front seat, and this . . . ’ You felt in your pocket and took out a foil-wrapped chocolate snowman.

  We both laughed. It was so silly. You broke a piece off to give to the child in the back of the car, but she was sleeping.

  ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ you said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. Is there any more chocolate?’

  We shared the last pieces and I said to you, ‘Do you remember when we first met and we had no money at all – we were paying off student loans and I was working two jobs, and we ate sausages and stuffing on Christmas Day, but no turkey because we couldn’t afford one? You knitted me a jumper.’

  ‘And one sleeve was longer than the other.’

  ‘And I made you a stool out of that ash tree the council had cut down. They left half the trunk on the street. Do you remember?’

  ‘God, yes, and it was freezing because you were in that horrible houseboat, and you wouldn’t come home with me because you hated my mother.’

  ‘I didn’t hate your mother! You hated your mother.’

  ‘Yes . . . ’ you said slowly. ‘What a waste of life hatred is.’

  You turned me to face you. You were quiet and serious.

  ‘Do you still love me?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I love you, but I don’t say it enough, do I?’

  ‘I know you feel it. But sometimes . . . I . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I feel like you don’t want me. I don’t want to force you but I miss your body. Our kisses and closeness, and yes, the rest too.’

  You were quiet. Then you said, ‘When he, Santa Claus, or what­ever he is, asked me to give him what I fear, I realised that if everything were still in the car and you were gone, then what? What if our house, my work, my life, everything I have was all where it should be, and you were gone? And I thought – that’s what I fear. I fear it so much I can’t even think about it, but it’s there all the time, like a war that’s coming.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That bit by bit I am pushing you away.’

  ‘Do you want to push me away?’

  You kissed me – like we used to kiss each other – and I could feel my tears, and then I realised they were yours.

  We got back in the car and drove slowly on through the last miles towards the village, the uneven roofs visible under the vanishing moon. Soon it would be day.

  A hooded figure was walking by the side of the road. You pulled alongside and stopped the car, opening the window. ‘Would you like a ride?’ you said.

  The figure turned to us; it was a woman carrying a baby. The woman pushed back her hood; her face was beautiful and strong. Unlined and clear. She smiled, and the baby smiled. It was a baby, but its eyes weren’t the eyes of a baby.

  Instinctively I looked round at the back seat. The cat was curled up in his basket, but the child was gone.

  Above us in the sky was a drop-pointed star, and a light strengthening in the east.

  ‘It’s nearly day,’ I said.

  You had pulled over now. You put your elbow on the steering wheel and your head on your hand. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Do you?’

  ‘She’s gone. The Spirit of Christmas.’

  ‘Have we dreamed it all? Are we at home, asleep, waiting to wake up?’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘If we’re asleep, let’s sleepwalk down to the cottage. We haven’t got much to carry any more.’

  The woman and child were ahead of us now, walking, walking, walking.

  We got out. You took my hand.

  We had not
iced everything once – the water collecting on the berried ivy, the mistletoe in the dark-armed oak, the barn where the owl sat under the tiles, the smoke like a message curling up from ­forest-burnt fires, the ancientness of time and us part of it.

  Why had we learned to hurry through every day when every day was all we had?

  The woman was still walking, carrying the future, holding the miracle, the miracle that births the world again and gives us a second chance.

  Why are the real things, the important things, so easily mislaid underneath the things that hardly matter at all?

  ‘I’ll light the fire,’ I said.

  ‘Later,’ you said. ‘I’d like to sleepwalk back to bed with you.’

  You were shy. You’re so tough but I remember this shyness. Yes. And yes. Asleep or awake. Yes and yes.

  Outside from across the fog-ploughed fields I heard the bells ringing in Christmas Day.

  rs Winterson never gave up her War Cupboard. From 1939 to 1945, she had done her bit for victory by pickling eggs and onions, bottling fruit, drying or salting beans and trading black-market tins of bully beef. She liked things you could store, and while waiting for either nuclear war in the 1950s and 1960s, or the Apocalypse Anytime Soon, she carried on pressing beef and making things with dried fruit.

  The two essential items in our lean-to kitchen both came with ­handles: the mangle, for wringing out the clothes on wash-day, and the Spong mincer. This was the largest Spong mincer money could buy and it lived clamped on the edge of our Formica table. One of its many uses was making mincemeat for mince pies. Mrs Winterson made her mincemeat in the autumn because we had plenty of windfall apples.

  It is confusing for those whose Christmas tradition does not include mince pies to work out why the mince is not meat, but fruit.

  The answer is that mince pies go back to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and in those days the miniature mince pies were indeed made with minced meat, fruit and candied peel.

  Why?

  Fruit and spices were used to disguise the inevitably ‘off’ flavour of meat without refrigeration. This is probably why fruit was so popular in English cooking right up until the late 1960s. We are not America and fridges were expensive back then. We didn’t get one until I went to secondary school in the 1970s. My dad won it in a raffle. It was a tiny under-the-counter fridge and mostly left empty. We had no idea what to do with it. The milkman delivered every day, veg came off the allotment or from the market twice a week, we had our own hens for eggs, and because we were poor we bought a joint of meat once a week – no more. The remains went through the Spong, to reappear in pies and meat pastes. If our food wasn’t being eaten it was being cooked, and if it wasn’t being cooked it was fresh. Who needed a fridge?

  But if you want to make your own no-meat mincemeat, with or without a Spong – here’s the recipe. Yes, you can use an electric ­blender, but a mechanical device with a handle delivers a more ­satisfying coarseness. If you don’t want to make your own, buy some good stuff (read the ingredients – not too much sugar, no bloody palm oil et ­cetera), then, before you use it, tip the contents of your jars into a bowl, add more brandy and stir. Commercial mincemeat is always too dry.

  FOR THE MINCEMEAT YOU NEED

  1 lb (450 g) cooking apples, cored and peeled – and then grated

  1 lb (450 g) nicely chopped suet (yes, suet . . . go figure)

  1 lb (450 g) each of sultanas, currants, raisins and demerara sugar. You can add candied peel if you like it. I hate it.

  6 oz (170 g) almonds, blanched and pounded up with a pestle and mortar

  Grated rind and juice of 2 lemons (unwaxed, organic; you are eating this stuff after all)

  Teaspoon grated nutmeg

  Teaspoon cinnamon

  Teaspoon salt

  Quarter pint of brandy – or rum if you prefer

  Stuff the dried fruit through the Spong. Chuck the fruit and everything else into a big bowl. Blend it all together. Add more brandy or rum if you don’t like the consistency. Not too runny but not slab-like either. Pack into jars and put in the back of a cool cupboard for at least a month.

  I do mine on Bonfire Night – November 5th. You could easily choose Halloween as an equally messy celebratory night of pointlessness, so why not do something useful while you’re trick or treating or making bonfires and getting drunk?

  Then you’re ready to roll (the pastry) come December.

  FOR THE MINCE PIES YOU NEED

  Your mincemeat – home-made or shop-bought

  1 lb (450 g) plain flour – I use organic; Mrs W used Homepride.

  Teaspoon baking powder

  ½ lb (225 g) unsalted butter – I use organic. She used lard.

  Tablespoon of sieved sugar or castor sugar

  Plain cold water (have this at the ready or you’ll cover the tap in pastry mix)

  An egg thoroughly beaten up in a cup for later

  You’ll also need a baking tray with individual shallow pie slots; grease these with the butter from the wrapper – or the lard from the wrapper if you want to be back in the 1960s.

  METHOD

  Wear an apron. This recipe is messy. Mrs W called her apron a pinny – short for pinafore – because our 1960s were also the 1860s.

  Put on some Christmas carols, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland or Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (it was written for Easter but soon became the mince-pie Christmas staple).

  Chuck everything except the water and the egg into a big bowl and knead it with both hands. When Mrs W was teaching me this when I was about seven she gave me the bowl and told me to knead the mixture, but I couldn’t work out how to get both knees into the bowl.

  When your mixture looks like breadcrumbs put in enough cold water to turn the stuff into dough.

  Now sprinkle some flour on the counter or rolling board, turn out the mixture, roll it with your rolling pin – good for your triceps – bang it around a bit and think of your enemies, if you are like Mrs Winterson, until you like the texture; you should be able to throw it at someone (your enemy) and do damage. Put this Christmas missile back in the bowl, cover it with a robin tea towel (optional robin) and stick it in the fridge for an hour, or just put it on the windowsill if the weather is cold or snowy or seasonal. But not raining.

  Mrs W never had to do this part because we had no central heating, just a coal fire, and our house was always freezing. Modern homes are too warm for good pastry. They used to say cold hands make good pastry. If you want the full 1960s experience, lard ­et cetera, turn off your heating the night before and wear two jumpers under your pinny.

  Get out the mincemeat – your own or shop-bought. Turn into a bowl and see if you want to add any more brandy or rum. Is the mixture too dry? This matters.

  Now – and this is my bit not hers – pour yourself a glass of wine and go and write some Christmas cards or wrap a few gifts; something seasonal and fun. Don’t do the ironing.

  Heat up the oven to 200°C or gas mark 6. You will know your own oven so do it some time during the hour the pastry is firming up. I have an Aga so I am useless at oven-work – and Mrs W had a gas oven of terrifying heat. It behaved like a castrated blast furnace roaring for its balls. Squat. Square. Short legs. Cast iron. Turn on the gas tap. Hiss. Throw in the match. Stand back. Boom. Roar. Rip of blue flame steadying to a line of unleashed orange. Inside of oven like a squash court of self-bouncing fire. Now cook.

  Hopefully you have a tamer domesticated version of this feral fire-box.

  So back to the fridge.

  After an hour or so, get out your pastry, cut the lump in half and roll out one half onto your floured counter. Not too thick. Use a cup or a cutter to make pleasing circles of pastry and press these firmly into your greased baking trays.

  Now fill each one generously, but not idiotically, with the mincemeat.

  Now you ha
ve a choice.

  Traditionally you roll out the other half of the pastry and make lids for the pies, sealing the joint with a bit of beaten egg and brushing egg over the top of the lid. Spear a hole in the lid with a skewer to let the steam out.

  OR – make more pies and just drape an ‘X’ of pastry in two strips over the mincemeat for those who want less pastry. Not me.

  These will cook faster, so don’t burn them.

  Bake for 20 minutes with lids, 15 minutes without lids. In an Aga this is not exact. In Mrs Winterson’s furnace it was 20 minutes or eat them black.

  Store in an old tin you have no use for but can’t bear to throw out.

  TIP: make twice the amount of pastry. It will keep in tinfoil in the fridge for five days. And then you can make some more mince pies quick and easy.

  THE SNOWMAMA

  t is snowing. In the English language we do not know anything about the ‘it’ that is snowing. It might be God. Maybe not.

  Anyway. It. Is. Snowing.

  What kind of snow?

  There are many kinds of snow. Did you k-snow that?

  There’s mountain snow. And polar snow. And ski-snow, and deep snow, and snow in flutters like tiny moths, and snow in flurries like moths in a hurry, and snow in flakes like someone (it?) is grating the sky.

  And snow sharp as insect bites and snow as soft as lather and wet snow that doesn’t stick and dry snow that does, and wraps the world like an installation to the point in the night where you wake up and the sound is gone, to the point in the night where you turn deeper into the bed, to the point in the night where there’s snow in your sleep and your sleep is as deep as snow.

  Then

  Open the curtainS Now!

  Wow!

  Snow on snow on snow on snow on snow.

  Deep enough for the dog to disappear, ears reappearing like wings. Cars are mounds. Sounds are children excitedly.

  Let’s build a snowman!

  Nicky and Jerry started rolling the snowball bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder. Soon they had a body bigger than either of them.

  Do you think she’s too fat? said Nicky.