Twelfth Night is supposed to mark the end of the Christmas season. Before midnight, unless we want to risk bad luck all year, the decorations must be taken down, and the last traces of the holiday removed. Our neighbors don’t know this. The morning after Twelfth Night, January 6, we’re still surrounded by houses draped in colored lights and ribbons, the owners entirely oblivious to the fact that they are tempting providence. In early January, some homes in our subdivision still have rotting pumpkins outside, suggesting a lamentable failure to turn over the pages of the calendar at all. Retailers continue to bang the holiday drum, doing their best to persuade us that the season of excess goes on forever.

Traditionally, Twelfth Night was the last big splurge of the season, a night of feasting and merrymaking presided over by the Bean King. The Bean King was chosen for the evening in the following way: traditional twelfth night cakes were handed out, in one of which a bean was concealed. I don’t know what kind of bean – let’s assume a baked bean. Anyway, whoever found the bean was declared Bean King. I wondered whether this method might be worth considering as an alternative, cheaper, and probably more effective way of choosing presidents. But no doubt the election committees would soon be spending billions of dollars on electronically traceable beans.

The point is that Twelfth Night drew a line under the winter Saturnalia. After that it was back to reality, back to work. Boundaries are good, beginnings and endings are good, even limits are good. They give life some sort of structure. But boundaries and limits are not popular these days. They interfere with commerce. If twelve days of Christmas are profitable, three dozen days of Christmas must be even more so. And if the season must end, let it lead straight into another equally joyful and equally expensive celebration.

And so one selling season flows indistinguishably into the next. I have it on good authority that the first Valentine’s cards and heart-shaped chocolate boxes were spotted in a store in Dix Hills, Long Island, on December 26. The florists shovel out heaps of unsold poinsettias with backhoes, to make space for roses. Right behind the chocolates and roses, the Easter bunnies are already getting in line. And so it goes through the year until, some time in August, the next wave of Christmas catalogs begins to arrive, and there we go again. Indeed, in my travels in New England, I have been amazed to see establishments called Christmas Shops, that actually do trade in tinsel and plush Santa Clauses and plastic trees all year long.

Oscar Wilde once said: “Anything becomes a pleasure if one does it once too often.” It was intended as irony, no doubt. But the real irony is that Wilde’s quip has become the ruling philosophy of the modern world. Only too much is enough.

Perhaps we need to recover that simple word “enough” for regular daily use. That’s enough on my plate; that’s enough space for a family to live in; that music is loud enough; that’s enough time to spend on Christmas Of course, we all need something to look forward to. That’s where history, as always, is instructive. The medieval calendar was packed with saint’s days and feast days, Holy days, tumbling one upon another. But these events came and went quickly. Today is Saint Crispin’s Day, but tomorrow is just Tuesday. We don’t want Saint Crispin’s Day sales, songs, souvenirs, TV specials and unrepeatable holiday offers rolling on through March. Even the best holiday loses its savor when it never stops.

Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night was written to be performed on January 5th, in the year 1601. It opens with these lines, spoken by Orsino, Duke of the imaginary kingdom of Illyria.

“If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that surfeiting the appetite may sicken, and so die.” Four centuries later, we can understand just how Orsino felt, on the twelfth day of Christmas. At the end of the play, the clown Feste reminds the audience that the holiday, by its nature, is brief, that the future is uncertain, that youth will not endure, and (just by way of a punchline) that the rain it raineth every day.

Twelfth Night has come and gone: the party’s over.

Copyright: David Bouchier

If you still need to make your Christmas pudding it’s too late. But if you want something special for 2012 here’s a recipe from my mother, who got it directly from her mother, who was born in 1884, the forty-seventh year of Queen Victoria’s Reign. My maternal grandmother lived to be almost a hundred, and my mother is a hundred and two, which will amaze you when you read this recipe.

Ingredients

Breadcrumbs (5 cups, real and fresh)
Sultanas, currents and raisins (at least 2 or 3 cups of each)
Grated carrot and apple (to keep the pudding moist and dark)
Golden Syrup ( 1 cup)
Treacle (1 cup)
Eggs (2 to 6 or more)
Flour (2 cups)
Brown sugar (3/4 cup)
Almonds (1/4 cup)
Pecans (1/4 cup)
Chopped dates (1/2 cup)
Candied Peel (1 1/2 cups)
Grated Nutmeg (1 tsp.)
Suet (1 1/4 cups)
Porter (1/2 to 1 cup of dark, sweet beer – Guinness is fine, or brandy or sweet sherry can be substituted)
Optional : mixed spice, ground ginger, juice of an orange.

I consulted my mother by telephone for more precise quantities and was told: “As much as you need, dear.”

Method

Mix as much as you need of all the above ingredients, plus any others you can think of, into a glutinous mass and keep stirring until your arm almost drops off (the whole family should join in this activity). Wrap tightly in a double layer of cheesecloth, or place in a covered bowl, and steam for at least 7 – 8 hours. When done, keep in a cool dark place for at least a year to mature, and get this year’s pudding from a catalog.
The pudding should be served smothered in warm brandy and ignited. Notify your local fire department before doing this.