Puddin Day Christmas Begins

Puddin Day Christmas Begins they come on a Saturday in November, the Puddin People, brothers, sisters, nieces arrive. family with their arms full of parcels sacks bulging with ingredients and of course the maestro to orchestrate. bags of raisins: sultana, golden tins of spices from distant trees grown in exotic lands, flour white as the snow sugar and carrots by the pounds and an new bottle of best Brandy. on a cold and frosted morning we gather for another year snow or no, our spirits are tinselled bells tingle from the sleeping garden we carry out a tradition formed out of our love for Mum and the season. Christmas pudding created each year since the first, exploded onto the walls and ceiling of the kitchen on Clinton street ever since nineteen forty four. this is our day when we remember together. an assembly line of merry alchemists forms around the table in the warm kitchen chopping, measuring, mixing and tasting telling jokes as old as Methuselah. laughter rises up on scents of steaming cinnamon and nut meg old stories, each year slightly different depending on the teller, regale us all with Brennan history spilling into catch-up conversations about kids and their lives those dispersed to the far corners. the pressure cooker, one of Methuselah’s wive’s, perks happily on the stove its own Christmas song of whistles and hisses producing the sweet dessert. the day stretches out unnoticed by the flour daubed some what sticky crew popping in batter pulling out fat round puddings enough for everyone’s celebration. we part in the dusk for another year Holding close our memories like gold and pudding of course all brown and moist soaking in its first drizzle of Napoleon. at Christmas dinner, no matter how far apart, we feast on Puddin and remember.