Dear LPG readers,

I can’t help it; though they are there all year round, I try to keep my relationship with them incredibly visual most of the time.  I am saying that I deliberately avoid them for most of the year even though I can see them there.  If you mention a mince pie to me most of the year, my imagination will see it in a box well-hidden with the cakes and biscuits on a supermarket shelf if I look hard enough, but as soon as Halloween and Bonfire night are over, they seem to come to the fore, and I can’t help myself. 

Christmas is on the way when the morning television shows start to get their celebrity chefs demonstrating how to make them again for those who like to dabble with pastry, although I am more about eating them.  I do know how to make them, but why bother? There are so many to choose from in the shops these days, and the way I look at it, cooking anything that you can’t do a better job of than the shop-bought version is something I am too old and slow to do anymore.  

I caught one such chef on the television recently. Although the method is the same as ever, she mentioned a few historical facts about the Christmas delicacy I had never heard before.  What the proficient cook said got me googling their history, and I discovered more about them.

I knew they were quite an old Christmas tradition, but I did not know how old they were.  They have been a part of Christmas since the Middle Ages and used to be rectangular initially.  They were called Crib pies at one time. While our 21st-century versions are usually round and made of all sorts of pastries (Choux, shortcrust, puff and filo, to mention a few), with all kinds of toppings (such as pastry-shaped lattices, stars and holly leaves, Viennese whirls and the all-important icing sugar dusting), they were initially shaped like a rectangle to represent the manger and topped with a pastry shaped Baby Jesus, when they were initially produced.  

Their fillings included cooked meats, fruit and spices. A specific number of ingredients were used to make them, and each was symbolic and related to the birth of Jesus. One website I found informs me that the meat symbolised the shepherds who visited, while the spices represented the gifts that the wise men brought with them, which surprised me a bit. Some people ate them hot as a main meal, and the traditions go even further.

It is said to be unlucky to stir the minced meat mixture anticlockwise.  Doing that is supposed to bring you bad luck throughout the coming year, but eating one each day, particularly if you can achieve that in a different house each time, is supposed to bring good luck for the same period.

I am sure I must miss some aspects of tradition, but now is the time to forget my waistline for the rest of the year and visit friends despite the cold.  And while my mince pie eating fest starts a few weeks before the big day, I strongly suggest that all readers who believe in good luck, starting with your own house on Christmas day (the first day of Christmas), make sure you partake of at least one, and remember that we all need to make sure to keep well stocked up.

That time just after Christmas can be lonely for so many people.  So, get out there and accept that your diet needs to be deferred for a bit, and do some serious visiting if you can.  Don’t forget to take your supply of good-luck ammunition with you just in case your host has run out… 

AK, Sydenham.  

AK shares some of the information she has learned…

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