Christmas

I think it is probably the case that even people who never, ever bake might consider doing so at Christmas. This doesn’t mean I’m going to load you down with homework, presenting this chapter as a kind of holiday-season project; the real point is that at Christmas you might feel you’ve got more time to play around with some of these recipes (or indeed any of the recipes in this book).

I must emphasize that, having never been someone to bake her own Christmas cake, make her own Christmas pudding, it is deeply satisfying when you do. This doesn’t mean it has to become a yearly obligation, a source of pressure rather than pleasure. One of the best things about being adult is that you can decide which rituals and ceremonies you want to adopt to give shape to your life and which you want to lose because they just constrain you. True, I think it takes more determination to shuck off the habits that you’ve inherited but don’t actually want at Christmas time; it’s hard not to feel that the way you always did it when you were a child is the way it should be done. So, I’ve consciously enjoyed setting my own pattern here, choosing what I want to be part of my family’s Christmas.