Open Writing

In every part of the world, Christmas traditions, sometimes centuries old, are handed from one generation to the next.

In South Africa, where snow is seldom seen and Christmas occurs in mid-summer, customs designed to while away long, dark, winter days are practised with pomp, ceremony and sometimes much discomfort. Hot meals are cooked in overheated kitchens while the sun bakes down outside. Pine-trees, wilting in the heat, are dragged inside to drop their needles on the carpet and die before Christmas arrives. Most people, however, have adapted the old traditions to the different weather conditions. Each family has their own way of celebrating:

Friends, descended from German immigrants, celebrated completely differently from our family. On the first Sunday in Advent, they lit the first of the advent candles set in a wreath. On each subsequent Sunday leading to Christmas, a further candle would be lit. Also on Advent Sunday, valuable antique decorations were taken out of storage and placed around the living room, adding elegance and beauty. The house filled with the heavenly scent of spiced biscuits and cakes baking.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, the tree was brought into the lounge, filling the room with the perfume of fresh pine sap. Once it was decorated, the children were not allowed in there until after dinner. They attended a church service at about five-thirty in the evening, in which the children participated, either in the choir or as part of the nativity play. They returned home to a meal of rich, traditional foods – sausages and meats from the German delicatessen, or fish, served with colourful salads. After the meal, either Mother or Father would quietly leave the room; from the lounge would come the sound of a tinkling bell announcing the arrival of – was it a Christmas Angel, or a Christmas Fairy? Perhaps it was Saint Nicholas - certainly there was no-one like our English Father Christmas. The family gathered near the tree which they’d spent so much time decorating earlier, where gifts had magically appeared. After opening the presents, everyone was deliciously tired and went to bed.

On Christmas morning they attended another church service, including communion, then they would visit a hospital or orphanage, singing Christmas carols to those less fortunate than themselves. The fragrance of roasting goose greeted them when they arrived home for lunch.

In our home, we celebrated in a more English way. Mum baked the Christmas cake in October, filling the house with the smell of hot spices and sweet, cooking fruit. Each week, until the cake was iced in early December.

Dad would ‘feed’ it with a dollop of brandy, which moisturised and supposedly ‘matured’ it. Dad would usually sneak a tiny sip of the brandy before returning it to its hiding place in a high cupboard.

My brother and I made our own decorations each year, with crinkle paper and flour-and-water paste, mixed by Mum. We waited for the holiday on sixteenth December, then sneezed our way around the large lounge-cum-dining room, draping gaudy red and green paper chains and twirlies from one side to the other, disturbing a year’s worth of dust as we went. Cards, which overflowed the letter-box each day, were strung amongst the chains, adding to the confusion; tinsel was draped over picture frames - it was a glorious mish-mash with very little elegance, which expressed our unrestrained excitement and joy.

Throughout December, our house was perfumed with the smell of baking sugar and butter. Mum made shortbread, which she gave away to friends and family as Christmas gifts, and fruit-mince pies, for which she mixed and minced her own fruit and made her own pastry; sweet, crunchy biscuits, and pans full of pink and white coconut ice – Mum’s pre-Christmas kitchen was busy.

Christmas Eve was the longest day of the year. We hid ourselves in our bedrooms with piles of last year’s Christmas wrapping paper and rolls of sellotape, wrapping gifts for every member of the family. After a light supper, my brother and I retired to our beds as early as possible, though not before laying elaborate traps for Father Christmas across the open windows. We left a plate of fruit-mince pies and a glass of milk for him in the lounge – every year he left crumbs and drops of milk on the table: he was a rather messy guest! We never caught a glimpse of his shadow, and certainly didn’t smell or hear the reindeer on our roof.

We hung stockings – Dad’s long socks – on our bedroom doors, and drifted off to sleep eyeing their limp forms. When we woke in the bright, birdsong dawn of Christmas morning, the stockings bulged with coconut ice and biscuits – Mum and Father Christmas were definitely in cahoots! There were balls and little toys and puzzles to keep us amused until breakfast time.

Christmas breakfasts were thick slices of slightly-burnt, hot, buttered toast, eaten with piles of peaches picked, ripe and fragrant, from the tree in the back garden.

Gifts were opened after breakfast, when everyone in the family was finally awake. Dad was the slow one, stretching out his shaving ritual until he knew we were bursting with impatience. After the fun of giving and receiving, we changed into our finest clothes and drove to church, where all the ladies wore their new perfumes in nose-numbing profusion, the combined pong hanging in an almost-visible miasma in the hot air.

We lunched on cold roast meats and salads, followed by watermelon with its sugary pink flesh that crunched in our mouths and poured its sweet juice down our chins; sometimes there was ice-cream as well, washed down on this grand occasion by Coca Cola.

In the afternoon, we’d visit one or other of the aunts’ and uncles’ homes, where we’d play with our seventeen cousins, swim in the pool where chlorinated water splashed and glittered in the glorious sunshine. We’d eat Christmas cake and almond icing, drink tea and exchange gifts.

At the end of that warm, midsummer’s day, once we were home again, Dad sat on the stoop, or stood at the fence chatting to our neighbour, sipping his annual dram of whisky and smoking his yearly cigar, at peace with the world. The scent of cigar smoke in balmy evening air returns the joy of childhood Christmases to my mind.

May the scents and memories of every Happy Christmas of your lives mingle with the joy and delight of this Christmas spent with all of those you love.

Until next week… ‘here comes Treble’.

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