A normal Christmas is predicted, and thanks to this the ritual police are now on patrol. I’m not complaining; I include myself among their number. Loading the freezer with sausage rolls for the party I plan to throw on Boxing Day, I enjoy the soothing embrace of order and repetition, the feeling that all is temporarily right with the world. Very little currently gives me more pleasure than the sound of my small niece talking me through her idea of a proper Christmas. “We have beef, not turkey,” she says, in a voice that is straight out of Barchester Towers (I play a supplicant Mrs Proudie to her austere Archdeacon Grantly).
It’s strange to think both of how little Christmas has changed in my lifetime and how much. In 2022, I struggle to explain to the young ones that as children my brother and I used to be given edible smoking sets by our granny: a chocolate pipe, cigar and cigarettes alluringly arranged on a moulded, plastic tray. The expressions on their faces insist I’m bonkers. Yet there will surely never be a Christmas at the end of which someone isn’t left looking at a hill of strawberry Quality Street; the Brexit deal does not exist that will fix this particular surplus. Some rituals, admittedly, take a while to get established. But thereafter, they cling like ivy. In the 1980s, my family began going out to an Indian restaurant on Christmas Eve, with the result that this day is now unimaginable without poppadoms. Suggest fish and chips, and there will be blood, not tomato ketchup.
All of which brings me to the matter of – the curse of – the panettone. This sweet Italian bread, shaped like a duomo and lightly punctuated with candied peel, has been stalking us for years now, at first an exotic luxury, and latterly a commonplace up there with poinsettias and horrible Christmas lattes. But cringe-making as its latest multifarious forms – “deluxe champagne”, “black forest”, “tiramisu-style” – undoubtedly are, it’s the existence of Waitrose’s £5.50 do-it-yourself panettone kit that really confuses me. Isn’t the entire point of panettone that it comes in a fancy box? How on earth are we supposed to observe what has become one of our major Christmas rituals if we all start bloody well making our own?
It goes like this. Someone, somewhere, buys a panettone. I know. It’s hard to imagine this shadowy figure, the Originator; like the person who begins a chain letter, they seem distant, possibly even slightly sinister. But there they are nonetheless, handing over their cash in exchange for a giant cloud of Italian nothingness. Cut to some days later (though given panettone use-by dates, we could be talking about many weeks or months later). Picture this same man or woman arriving at a house, merrily swinging their panettone from a ribbon on a finger. Ding-dong! A bell rings, a door opens, the cries of delight start up.
The signalling is, of course, utterly effortless. No one’s going to break ranks. Everyone’s in on the pantomime. Here is bountiful generosity. And here, too, is sophistication: the spirit of Leonardo and Michelangelo, of Dante and Boccaccio, in a convenient, baked format. After this, everyone starts on the wine and crisps, the panettone having already been swiftly dispatched to a cupboard under the stairs.
And so it begins. The reel moves forward again, to the moment when the panettone is retrieved by its recipient, who now urgently requires a present to take elsewhere. And thus, the (allegedly) noble Italian cake whose roots may be traced back to the Roman empire embarks on its long circumnavigation of whichever British city it happens to be in, a kind of Christmas pass the parcel. On and on it goes, a journey that, though it may last as long as any of Marco Polo’s travels, always ends the same way. Many moons hence, someone vaguely resourceful will call a halt to the farce – arriverderci, pane strano! – and turn the thing into bread and butter pudding, or even into toast.
Yes. As traditions go, this one is very strange, and so much less fun than wassailing or wearing a Christmas sweater. But it does appear to be here to stay. A visit to my own cupboard under the stairs reveals three panettone currently in residence. They wait silently, these saffron and cardboard ambassadors. It is almost as if they know the moment will soon be upon them.
