The Christmas Pudding
Holliday, Carl
184 THE COMMONWEAL December 22, x926 of Gothic ivories of the fourteenth century (figure 2). Of this important collection no catalogue exists. Giovanni Batfista De Rossi, the founder of the...
...The co6pera- tion reflected in the arrangements for the catalogue bears witness to the breadth of vision animating the direction of the Vatican Library, and to the happy facility with which objects of pure scholarship achieve an international modus operandi...
...When honest sisters met to pray, not prate, About their own, and not their neighbors' state...
...Chaucer, the fourteenthcentury poet, speaks in his Canterbury Tales of a cook's prowess in making puddings and sauce therefor...
...Well might Sir Walter Scott dedare that "England was Merry England then...
...It is a task for a group, rather than for a single scholar...
...The Vatican Library has assigned the task to the writer of this article and his colleagues of the De- partment of Art and Archaeology at Princeton Uni- versity, with the invaluable assistance of the staff of the library itself, and especially of S. E. Pio Franchi de'Cavalieri, Bali of the Knights of Malta, and the most accomplished hagiologist in Italy...
...Well, at the present price of food, most housewives would stand aghast at the ingredients...
...Let no man trust such a nation, for in the hour of trial it will fall...
...its foundations are not built upon that solid rock of human strength--the Christmas pudding[ (Due to limitations of space in this issue of The Common-weal, several important communications have been omitted...
...Whenever a national stomach can no longer digest a pudding, that race is doomed...
...its resisting and absorbing capacities are fast ebbing away...
...THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING By CARL HOLLIDAY H OW long man has considered pudding a Christmas necessity, would be hard to calculate...
...in Shakespeare's day the references to the Christmas pudding are innumerable...
...And in it put great lumps of fat As big as my two thumbs...
...in the seventeenth-century folk-tales and ballads you may smell its savory odors...
...And men had better stomachs at religion Than I to capon, turkey-cock, or pigeon...
...Our Pilgrim ancestors had their doubts about pudding-- and well they might...
...it has filling capacity that is positively marvelous...
...and the next day when she brought the savory pudding before her lord and master he doubtless had inner qualms lest his heart--and stomach--should incline too much toward the good things of this world...
...This astounding and deadly conglomeration was nine feet in circumference and weighed twelve stone, or about one hun- dred and sixty-eight pounds...
...Let nothing you dismay...
...Some modern physiologists have declared plum pudding the insidious foe of man's welfare...
...At even an earlier date, the priests of the early Christian Church told the congregation that the pudding was a symbol or emblem of the offering brought to the Christ Child in the manger by the Wise Men from the East--and through all the centuries that have passed since then, this triumph of baking has been celebrated in song and story...
...Publication of these will follow shortly.--The Editors...
...Heed them not--they are as tinkling cymbals and sounding brass...
...A goodly mixture, indeed...
...That day is forever past, but it is to be hoped we shall never let that pudding pass away...
...Those were indeed pious times...
...Loud were the cheers that rang forth at this imposing spectacle...
...It is well that the peasants, gathered in front of the castles, sang the reassuring Christmas carol: "God rest you, merry gentlemen...
...English tradition says that old King Arthur had one made for his Round Table, and his recipe is still on record: ;'A bag pudding the King would make And stuffed it well with plums...
...for " 'Twas in those days an honest grace would hold Till a hot pudding grew at heart a-cold...
...What went into these famous puddings of the olden days...
...It, and the startling boar's head, with cherry eyes and sugar teeth, were brought in on immense silver platters, garlanded with holly and all aflame with burning brandy...
...On Christmas Eve, she deftly mixed some milk, bread-crumbs, butter, salt, eggs, sugar, and raisins...
...When, therefore, the British tell you to come at "pudding time," they do not mean to invite you to the coffee-and-cigar end of the dinner, but to the whole menu...
...But still the Puritan housewife occa- sionally made one...
...The old-time pudding was served with great pomp and ceremony...
...Generally the great pudding was molded into the shape of the jolly head of Old King Cole, or Santa Claus---a custom that is followed to this day in ancient Osborne House on the Isle of Wight...
...You may measure a nation's vitality by its plum puddings...
...it is becoming effete...
...Ungodly extravagance would never have been borne under such conditions, and the saintly wife, who then really did "love, honor, and obey" her "goodman," invented a simple pudding that was tasty, healthful, and above all--a success finandally...
...Giovanni Batfista De Rossi, the founder of the science of early Christian archaeology, had commenced one before his death in t894, and had reached the point of a manuscript inventory which is now preserved in the Vatican Library and must serve as starting-point for any further work of the sort...
...Thus, in I77o, one was made at Newcastle, England, which contained the following articles: Two bushels of flour, twenty pounds of butter, four geese, two turkeys, four wild ducks, two woodcocks, six snipe, four partridges, two heat's tongues, two curlews, seven blackbirds, and six pigeons...
...No wonder that we unfortunate descendants of our forefathers are afflicted with indigestion...
...It would have taxed even the supreme competence of a De Rossi to dassi-fy properly all the objects of the Museo Cris-tiano, so varied is their character, and so wide the space of time (from the third to the eighteenth cen-tury) over which their dates of production are scat-tered...
...It is cheap and certainly effectual...
...We should remember that it was the custom in early Eng- land to eat the pudding before anything else was served at the Christmas banquet, and to this day some English families persist in eating their pudding first...
...184 THE COMMONWEAL December 22, x926 of Gothic ivories of the fourteenth century (figure 2...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 7
