In the 14th of a series of articles, Revd James Gilder of Wanstead Parish recalls the traditions baked into his grandmother’s Christmas cakes and explains why we should all become tradition-makers
Do you have any family Christmas traditions? Lots of families do, of course. Often, these things are a kind of unwritten expectation of family life; they get passed down generations and they make each family just that little bit unique.
My grandmother would always make and ice a Christmas cake, replete with marzipan, of course. It would then be decorated with a little lake of silver foil, besides which would be placed the same decorations, amassed over the last 70 years or so: a plastic fir tree, a little church scene and an oversized, slightly menacing-looking robin, which always seemed poised to devour a rather smaller-scale Father Christmas along with his sleigh and reindeer. All of this would be fenced in with delicately piped blobs of lurid green icing, finished with those edible silver baubles that sit unloved for most of the year, next to the vanilla essence and bicarbonate of soda in the ‘miscellaneous’ drawer in the kitchen, awaiting their time to shine come December. In more recent years, my uncle has taken over the tradition and, of course, this cake would not be the same were it not for the decorations that everyone in our family remarks upon every year.
Perhaps we’re quite a boring family to delight in such a mundane tradition, but I doubt we’re alone. These apparently little things keep us grounded with what has gone before. They provide a link to those whom we love and no longer see and give a strangely dual sense of timelessness and seasonal rhythm we humans seem to like. ‘Tradition’ gets knocked about and dismissed in the name of progress quite a bit in our world, but you know, there’s something to be said for it. There can be a real emptiness when we lose it, because to lose it is to lose a sense of the love of someone else.
Of course, not everyone is blessed with happy memories of family time at Christmas. It can often be a time of arguments and sadly, reports of domestic violence tend to peak at the end of December, too. For some, it is an intensely lonely time. Those are traditions we could all do without perpetuating, and if you think you will be on your own on Christmas Day, please do sign up for our free Christmas lunch in the parish halls instead.
Yet, for all of us, this time of year can be a good excuse to carry on the good traditions of the past – to give not just gifts of ever-more ‘stuff’, but to help spread the joy of the season to new generations. Those of us who enjoyed the traditions of Christmas past must now be the tradition-makers for those younger than us.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the Christ child at Christmas. Jesus is the one part of Christmas that we Christians believe to be more than just a tradition, but instead, the living source of hope, love and redemption. Whatever your beliefs or traditions, I wish you all a very happy Christmas.
To contact Reverend James Gilder, email office@parishofwanstead.org
