‘Tis nearly time to rejoice again in Yuletide festivities and frolics, as relished in times of old, when one was more readily excited about it. It’s that season of goodwill where you meet together with family members you tried to avoid the entire year. You exchange niceties and gifts, dusted off and recycled from last year and trust you pass them on to someone different this time around.

Which brings me to the inevitable subject of «Christmas Dinner»; turkey, sprouts and the remaining fanfare of things you have similarly avoided for the last twelve months. It’s as though they have been waiting in the wings, anxious to delight you anew, with the charisma of a cockroach. Suffice it to say, that «mother» needed to impress the butcher by buying the largest turkey in the land, so we had weeks of recycling the stuff in every conceivable camouflage, post-Christmas.

Turkey was the most unpalatable challenge for me and the accompanying stuffing and bread sauce, which were designed to stretch the «star of the show» certainly didn’t upgrade it. Having arrived on the premises, the turkey took its place in the pantry, relegating other food instantly to a place way down the pecking order. I’m not privy to the initiation ceremony of said bird, but having stuffed some sausage meat up its rear cavity and greased the sides with lard, it just squashed into the oven. It lingered there overnight, until it was released some twelve hours later, inconsolably parched, as indeed I would have been, if left for hours in the sauna. Hence, it awaited the next leg of its untimely career – the carving ceremony.

Now turkey can fool you into a sense of deep desire with its succulent aroma and its crisp, golden skin. But once disrobed and stripped of its modesty, its endless mass of beige-on-beige meat, devoid of flavour or appeal is laid bare and eclipses everything around it. The visual image of uninspiring slices of turkey with (God forbid) bread sauce and the horrific stuffing left me seriously wondering about the gastric partialities in my family. Prior to the onslaught, we chanted the mandatory «grace» to give thanks, presumably to the Lord, but certain credit had to go to the turkey. As they tucked into it with unabated passion, I could hardly conceal my inner craving for some beans on toast. The only colourful thing on the plate was the abundance of soggy Brussel sprouts, which somehow failed to moisten or compensate for the dehydrated fowl. Of course, the roast potatoes could have marginally redeemed the festive dish, had they been remotely seasoned and crispy. However, their administration was distinctly undermined by the mammoth creature in the oven, as they loitered in the dish with unrefined irrelevance. Of course, no platter could be quite all-embracing without the obligatory gravy, which had found some brown powder masterfully integrated with water and heated up.

As we sat around the table, eyeing up the carcass, we remembered the starving folk of Africa, while the adults became progressively sloshed on sherry and wine. Having laboured our way through the spread, we donned paper hats to make the occasion really jolly and awaited the next tribute to culinary pleasure – the Christmas pudding. If you didn’t have toothache before this Yuletide speciality you were well on the way to one afterwards.

So finally, another totally anticipated culinary event came to a thankful end, as we all settled down to absorb the Queen’s speech at three o’clock. And as the adults all nodded off to a more elevated world, it was customary for me, to wash the dishes and reflect ……………..

Photo: Pixabay