MARY'S BIT or POPPING A PENNY IN YOUR PUDDING
We weathered another Attack of The Household Appliances in mid-November when the oven conked out for the third time so we were without its culinary assistance for a couple of weeks. Thus it was we discovered cooking using burners only was possible to the extent of creating a simulacrum of breakfast buns or a biscuit somewhat resembling a ginger snap by cooking them in a frying pan. Now repaired, the oven's been behaving itself so we are in fine shape for Yuletide cuisine.So far.
Speaking of festive cookery, for me one of the most memorable passages in Dickens' Christmas Carol is his description of the Cratchit family's Christmas pudding as it was about to be brought to table:
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding!
This homely scene is a favourite because the scullery of a childhood home was equipped with a copper of Victorian vintage such as Dickens mentions. A brick cube holding a tub for laundry with water heated via a small built-in fireplace, we didn't use it for its intended purpose nor yet to heat Christmas puddings so the black beetles had it to themselves. No, our puddings were boiled for hours in a basin wrapped in a tea towel so we were familiar with the steamy aroma Dickens so poignantly describes.
Naturally Christmas puddings prepared for high society were elaborate concoctions. Consider Mrs Beeton's "mode" for her Christmas Plum-Pudding, which she modestly describes as "Very Good". As well it should be, given it contained one and a half pounds of raisins, half a pound apiece of currants and mixed peel, three-quarters of a pound of bread crumbs and the same amount of suet, eight eggs, and a wine glass of brandy. The result was boiled for five or six hours and again for two hours the day it was served. Mrs Beeton considers this princely pudding sufficient for seven or eight persons.
Admittedly it could not provide as many helpings as Mrs Beeton's magnificent creation but the two-serving tinned Christmas pudding a British friend sent some years ago worked well for us. It may be those who look askance at tinned cranberry sauce as an acceptable side dish for holiday meals would not agree on aesthetic grounds, given these festive puddings traditionally should be shaped like cannonballs rather than cylinders. But it's the thought and the taste that matters, right?
There's a old custom my family and many others kept up albeit in a modified way. In the Victorian era silver charms said to foretell their finders' fortunes were included in the pudding and I gather it's possible to purchase similar festive folderols these days . However, when our pudding was served it was inevitably accompanied not only by piping hot custard but also a maternal warning to watch our teeth. This was necessary because a silver sixpenny bit would be lurking somewhere in the pudding although on one occasion a copper penny well wrapped in greaseproof paper was substituted. Whatever the denomination, whoever found the coin in their portion could expect good luck during the following year.
As to the Crachits' pudding, given their difficult financial circumstances, it seems unlikely they would be able to pop a penny in their pudding but there's still a pleasing Yuletide connection between their copper cookery and our cooked copper coin.
NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER
The ticker awakens and leaps into life with a couple of notices concerning recent doings at Maywrite Towers.
THE SELLER OF FAUX CAT MUMMIES or EVEN MINOR CHARACTERS HAVE LIVES TOO
Our theory is although minor characters may appear only once or twice, making them more than cardboard cut-outs adds interest to the narrative while also providing our sleuth John with information moving the plot forward. We recently contributed an essay on this topic to Kevin Tipple's popular blog, Point your clickers herehttps://kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com/2025/11/guest-post-minor-characters-have-lives.html
A TALISMAN, A MAZE, AND NINE SOLUTIONS or GUESS THE CONNECTION?
Our question's the type of conundrum found in Christmas crackers along with the customary paper hat. Did you guess? If not, we've recently returned to occasionally reviewing novels from the Golden Age of Detection on our blog. The latest batch appear next to free e-texts for J. J. Connington's The Case With Nine Solutions, The Dangerfield Talisman, Murder In The Maze, and Tragedy at Ravensthorpe, John Rhode's The Murders in Praed Street, and The Dream Detective by Sax Rohmer. See the Maywrite Library page athttps://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/p/the-maywrite-library.html
ERIC'S BIT or THE APPETIZER TO THE YULETIDE FEAST
Thinking of Christmases past I can remember the merry jingle of sleigh bells. Not in the snow but the ones my grandparents hung on the living room door. There was also a tree ornament that dated to long before my time, a thin, severe looking Santa who hadn't yet put on weight and become jolly. If I were an elf I wouldn't apply for a job at his workshop.Although I don't date back to the era of those artifacts, the holidays f my childhood were a lot different than today's. For starters you couldn't sit comfortably at home ordering online from Amazon. Indoor shopping malls had barely been invented. To buy presents you went downtown, exposed to the elements, seeing your frosty breath (in the Northeast at any rate) as you hiked along crowded sidewalks. It took some gumption to put a gift under the tree.
Speaking of Christmas trees, you didn't have a choice between a real tree and a tree that looked real. Artificial trees were made of shiny aluminum.
One thing I suppose hasn't changed -- kids couldn't wait to rip the wrappings off packages. I was cruelly forced to consume scrambled eggs and orange juice before I was released to tear into the living room and start tearing. As far as what youngsters today find once those boxes are open, that's a different story.
But let's start with Christmas stockings. They were the appetizer to the Yuletide feast. Are they still packed with a tangerine, some walnuts and that little mesh bag of chocolate coins covered in gold foil? One thing that won't be found are the white candy cigarettes with red tips. Conversely third graders wouldn't make clay ashtrays to take home to their parents.
When it comes to the main menu in 2025, electronics are doubtless a must. You probably know what I mean -- those devices kids all have that beep and light up and who knows what. Well, I had a Robert the Robot. He rolled around, made noise, and his eyes flashed. He was battery powered. Does that make him electronic? I also thought about my metal bulldozer that drove around spewing sparks from its smokestack. Then I remembered winding it up. No electronics there.
I'm not sure if books are a big item these days. They were for me. There were always several thick, liberally illustrated volumes about nature, astronomy, dinosaurs and the like. Most of what I read in them is obsolete now. There were thirty-one planetary satellites in the solar system, most of which I could name. Now close to nine hundred have been discovered. It impressed me that Jupiter had an astounding twelve moons, not just the four I could see through my telescope, another Christmas gift. Today Jupiter has ninety-five moons and Saturn two-hundred seventy-four. And Saturn isn't the only planet with rings, having been joined by Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. There aren't even nine planets, Pluto having been demoted. On the other hand astronomers have identified dwarf planets and planets circling distant stars.
So even the science books I got for Christmas are as obsolete as Robert the Robot.
I also received fiction, usually the newest Tom Swift Junior books. Yes, even my Swifts are sadly dated. Oddly, those have aged better than the factual tomes. Diving Seacopters and Atomic Earth Blasters are as unreal today as they were back then.
Our imaginations and memories remain while the past slides away from us. I wonder what became of those sleigh bells my grandparents brought from the farm or the Santa ornament my great grandparents carried from Germany? Can Christmas survive in anything like its present form? Is it possible for children to believe in Santa in the Internet age? One can only hope.
AND FINALLY
We'll be greeting the new year a few hours earlier than many of our subscribers because celebrations at Maywrite Towers break out at 7 pm Eastern Time, at which time it is midnight in England and 2026 has arrived there. For now, however, we'll close this last issue of 2025 with a reminder that, like the proverbial bad penny, we'll turn up in subscribers' in-boxes again on February 15th.
See you then!
Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter persuasion. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our names on the social site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time! To unsubscribe from this newsletter jot a line to maywrite@earthlink.net and we'll take care of it.
