Season’s greetings!
When my sons were younger, they were given a pair of water pistols for Christmas. You know the big, pump-action ones? Shortly after the gift-giving, we drove to Christmas lunch. The loaded guns came too, ‘to show the cousins’. Ringleader son had no trouble convincing join-the-party son that it would be fun to aim some Christmas cheer at passing cars.
Conflict and confiscation are never on our Santa wish list, so we let it happen. Some motorists were not impressed. Most took their dash of Christmas spirit with a friendly wave. This Scroll will not get you wet, but I hope it will shoot some seasonal cheer into your inbox.
Here for your delectation:
the first Australian Christmas cards
a historical serve of Christmas pudding, including a recipe
a couple of Christmas poems, one from me
and the link to buy my newly self-published Where’s the Red Button?
Ta-daa! My first self-published book is available for sale! Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on the cover or the content. Paperback copies are $22.95 including postage. The ebook is coming very soon and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
The First Australian Christmas Cards
In 1881 stationer John Sands invited the public to submit designs to a Christmas card competition. Only ‘thoroughly Australian Christmas cards’ were eligible. Australians now saw ‘pretty pictures… of snow and ice’ as ‘an anomaly’ that didn’t reflect their experience of Christmas.
The competition attracted over 600 entries. An exhibition of the artwork was ‘thronged’ by 800 people in a day, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The SMH’s correspondent was sniffy about the quality of some entries. They commented, for example, that the ‘vein of quaint humour’ in the first card below was ‘undeveloped’.
The first prize winner has been lost, unfortunately. But the Mitchell Library still has a collection of entries, which feature plenty of Aussie flora, fauna and humour. Here’s a sample:
The poem on the third card, below the gold diggers, reads
Said we, “Here’s Christmas come again
And we no farthing richer!”
Time answered, “Ah! The old, old strain,
Prithee pass the pitcher;
Why measure all your good in gold?
No rope of sand is weaker;
Tis hard to get - ‘tis hard to hold;
Come lads, fill up your beaker!'
We all want some Figgy Pudding
On the Christmas table, pudding is ‘the grand feature of substantiality’, as Mrs Beeton wrote in her 1861 cookery classic. I have to agree with her. As did the cartoonist in a Queensland magazine in 1884:
Be warned :)
Mrs Beeton gives a recipe for plum pudding that contains no plums, no sugar and no spices. She recommends making ‘five or six of these puddings at one time’. If unexpected guests show up, you’ll then have ‘a quickly prepared dish’, that ‘only’ takes two hours to reheat. Shows you how much time must have gone into meal preparation before microwaves, fridges and Uber eats.
I prefer this from Modern Cookery, published in 1846:
‘The Author’s Christmas Pudding’ Recipe
Ingredients: Flour, 3ozs; bread-crumbs, 3ozs; suet, stoned raisins, and currants, each, 6 ozs; minced apples, 4ozs; sugar, 5 ozs; candied peel, 2ozs; spice, 1/2 teaspoonful; salt, few grains; brandy, small wineglassful; eggs, 3; 3 1/2 hours.
To three ounces of flour and the same weight of fine, lightly grated breadcrumbs, add six of beef suet, chopped small, six of raisins weighed after they are stoned, six of well-cleaned currants, four ounces of minced apples, five of sugar, two of candied orange rind, half a teaspoonful of nutmeg mixed with pounded mace, a very little salt, a small glass of brandy, and three whole eggs. Mix and beat these ingredients well together, tie them tightly in a thickly floured cloth, and boil them for three hours and a half. We can recommend this as a remarkably light small rich pudding: it may be served with German, wine, or punch sauce.
And to go with it, here's the 'Common Pudding Sauce':
Sweeten a quarter-pint of good melted butter with an ounce and a half of sugar, and add to it gradually a couple of glasses of wine; stir it until it is at the point of boiling, and serve it immediately. Lemon-grate or nutmeg can be added at pleasure.
A Christmas Poem
Pleasures of pudding and family aside, what I love most about Christmas is its deep, dark sacredness. I think it is astounding that a divine God subjects himself to being human. It’s no wonder a lot of people don’t believe it. But if you let yourself consider, even for a moment, it is paradoxical and profound. Hence this poem I’ve written:
The First Christmas
He crowns between the trembling knees
Of a homeless teen
She tears — an atom split apart —
Eternity is pushed
Head first into time
And laid bare
On our earth.
Have a very happy Christmas. I hope the feasting doesn’t give you indigestion! May you, your family and community be blessed with peace, joy and wonder.