Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days

  She was overtaken and brought back to the house.

  Joshua, it was put about, had died of TB. His father, desperate that no one should examine his body, walled him up in the ice house to die. His little lover, the gardener’s daughter, was forcibly taken and walled in with him. Then the site was earthed over and levelled. It had lain undisturbed for more than a hundred and fifty years.

  Only two people alive at the time had known the true story – Williamson himself, and Ruth. Ruth died the following year.

  Tom drove me back to the city. ‘I don’t see how they can stay in that house – do you?’

  I didn’t answer. If you don’t answer the speaker will speak again. ‘I thought I might make a documentary about it – find out the whole story. What do you think?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘None of this would have happened except for Ross and his bloody mast.’

  ‘It was me,’ I said.

  ‘Any of us could have slept in that bedroom.’

  ‘It was me.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Sally. Would you like to go out for a ­Chinese on Christmas Day?’

  Tom reached over and patted my hand. I took it.

  ‘My grandmother was a Williamson,’ I said.

  hristmas is about community, collaboration, celebration.

  Done right, Christmas can be an antidote to the Me First mentality that has rebranded capitalism as neo-liberalism. The shopping mall isn’t our true home, nor is it public space, though, as libraries, parks, playgrounds, museums and sports facilities disappear, for many the fake friendliness of the mall is the only public space left, apart from the streets.

  I think we can all reclaim the spirit of Christmas – less shopping, more giving, less spending, more time for friends, including the joyfulness of cooking and eating together, and sharing what we have with others.

  There’s a sign over the entrance to Shakespeare and Company: Be Not Inhospitable To Strangers Lest They Be Angels In Disguise.

  Shakespeare and Company has been a bookshop in Paris since 1919. Begun by the legendary Sylvia Beach, from Pennsylvania, the bookstore became a second home to all those famous pre-war Americans – Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Beach was the first publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

  The store closed during the Second World War, and eventually reopened under its original name, opposite Notre Dame, run by George Whitman, an ex-GI who loved books and Paris in equal measure.

  George never closed the store on Christmas Day; usual opening hours of midday to midnight were observed, and George cooked a meal for anyone who wanted to eat – that has included Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller and a batch of Beat poets. Ginsberg read ‘Howl’ with his clothes off and Gregory Corso particularly liked the holiday fare on offer one year: ice-cream, doughnuts and Scotch.

  And they kept coming back – in 1982 George’s daughter, ­Sylvia, spent her second Christmas on this earth with Allen ­Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso, eating a supper of ­baking-powder biscuits and cheese soufflé.

  George believed that books were a sanctuary for the mind. His bookshop became a sanctuary for body and soul. There is a library for anyone who wants to sit and read out of the cold or the sun. In George’s day, as many as twenty-four impoverished writers and readers were sleeping in the store as well.

  Now George is dead. He made it to ninety-four and died in his tiny apartment over the shop. His daughter Sylvia (born when George was sixty-eight) runs the ever-expanding bookopolis with her partner, David Delennet. The bookstore has finally become a business (George refused a computer or a telephone, or even a cash register), though the spirit hasn’t changed. The store is no longer open on Christmas Day, but Sylvia and David cook a meal for staff and volunteers, and any lost writers fighting with their masterpieces.

  Sylvia wrote to me:

  One Christmas when the only thing left at the ­butcher’s was a piglet, I cooked it for twenty-five people. Its teeth came out and it looked terrifying. When I presented it to the ­table, there were gasps of shock from the display and then lots of giggles because half the table was Jewish and didn’t eat pork!!! Disaster.

  Then there was another Christmas when Hong, the Chinese caretaker who helped with Dad, made dumplings – actually she called them DUMPINGS; this was when she first arrived and barely spoke a word of French or English. The Irish writer Ulick O’Connor was there, and as he was about to put a dumpling in his mouth he asked if there was any onion in them. Hong shook her head. He popped the dumpling in his mouth and said, ‘Good, because if there’s onion I die.’

  I googled an onion, showed it to Hong and she suddenly changed her mind and said yes, yes, there’s definitely onion in there. Nightmare.

  He was OK, though. Dad said he mustn’t be allergic to ­Chinese onions.

  Soon after Christmas in 2007 I made my way to the bookshop in a bad state of loss – that summer my partner had left me abruptly; it felt like a death. That loss had triggered something deeper and scarier, but I was trying not to let anyone know.

  I was coping by writing – in fact, the story in this collection ‘The Lion, the Unicorn and Me’ was written that December. I wrote it straight through one night, too unhappy to sleep. Its hero is a runty little donkey who gets a golden nose. I am the donkey.

  Sylvia and David gave me the bookstore to roam in, their dog, ­Colette, to keep me company, a radiator to sit beside and all the meals I could eat. Later on, as things got worse for me, they bought me pyjamas and nursed me through a chest infection.

  I had been to Shakespeare and Company many times before. I had met George, already ninety.

  He didn’t look pleased to see me. In fact he threw a book at my head.

  George: What’s she doing in my apartment? Who’s she?

  Sylvia: She’s a writer, Daddy. Jeanette Winterson.

  George looked pleased and he put down the next book he was preparing to launch at my person.

  George: Did you show her the writers’ room? No? Goddam, do I have to do everything myself? She can stay as long as she likes – let me show you the writers’ room. You read Henry Miller? He. . .’

  George loved writers. All writers. His home was our home.

  To be made welcome. To be acknowledged. To be fed. To sleep soundly. To feel safe. To read. To put words on a page that others will read.

  My mind was in free fall. Going mad is a risk. A journey not to be made if you can help it. Sometimes it is a journey that has to be made. But like all desperate journeys, there will be helpers along the way.

  So at Christmas I raise a book and a glass to the star that led me to Shakespeare and Company and the refuge I found there, and the creative kindness of a way of life that has never reckoned money as the bottom line.

  If you want to read the whole story of Shakespeare and Company, past, present and future, they have just published a book about it: Shakespeare and Company: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart (I wrote the foreword).

  And here is the recipe for Hong’s Dumpings.

  YOU NEED

  1 lb (450 g) flour

  1 lb (450 g) pork

  1 lb (450 g) Chinese cabbage

  Bunch of scallions

  Fresh root ginger – not too much

  Tablespoon of white wine

  Salt and pepper

  Water

  Egg – if you like a richer dough. Not necessary.

  METHOD

  Hong says: Make the dough in the usual way, kneading the flour and water. Less water if you are adding an egg. The dough must be not too soft, not too hard. If it is too soft, add more flour. Too hard and dry, add more water. Making the dough takes about 15 minutes by hand, depending on the quantity you make.

  Cut the dough in half or thirds, depending on the quantity you make, and roll each po
rtion out thinly, but not too thin, or it will break when filled. Use a cup to cut out rounds like little full moons. Each of these full moons will be the dumpling parcels when filled.

  For the filling, chop everything up separately, and small as a fingernail. This is important. Then mix all your filling ingredients together in a big bowl. Season to taste. And maybe you like more onion, maybe you like more ginger – up to you. As you experiment you will know.

  Now fill your dough parcels with about a tablespoon of filling. You have to learn just how much filling so that the dumplings are plump, but not so fat that they come apart when boiled.

  Today you will fold your full moons into half-moons for the filled dumplings. That is simple to do. If you like making dumplings you can experiment with different shapes and fancy folds later on.

  My grandmother makes beautiful shaped and folded dumplings while she watches TV; her hands know what to do and she never even looks down once.

  When the dough is filled, fold it into the easy half-moons and seal the edges all the way round by dipping your sealing fingers and thumb in a bowl of water. Seal must be tight. No gaps, or the filling will escape, and your pan water will be a messy soup of pork and cabbage bits.

  While you are making the dumplings, bring to the boil a big pan of water, like for pasta.

  Add the dumplings, stirring so that they don’t stick.

  Now add another big cup of cold water – enough to take the water off the boil, and bring back to the boil.

  Repeat this step.

  You are boiling the dumplings 3 times.

  After 6 or 7 minutes, take one out and slice open to see if the filling is cooked.

  If you cook from frozen, it takes a bit longer. Remember to tip the dumplings straight into the hot water; do not defrost first.

  You can use different meat. Doesn’t have to be pork. Or shrimp. You can add carrots to the cabbage. Cooking times vary a little depending on the filling.

  In China people were poor when I was growing up. Dumplings were made with what you could get. We kept pigs, like many Chinese. Once you have the feel for dumplings, use for your filling whatever is in the kitchen, fresh at the market, or in the garden.

  My friend JW made rabbit, carrot and leek dumplings and they were very good. She has a lot of rabbits in her garden. I think because she grows a lot of carrots. But it is well-known that rabbits do not eat the onion family so she grows her carrots behind an armed guard of leeks. Still, sometimes, a rabbit has to be taught a lesson and the dumplings were the result.

  Dip your dumplings in any sauce you like – a simple, good quality soy sauce with added ginger or scallions is delicious.

  CHRISTMAS CRACKER

  hristmas Eve at the Cracker Factory.

  Boxes labelled ‘Trumpets’, ‘Drums’, ‘Stars’, ‘Robins’ and ‘Snowmen’ were stacked on either side of the long ­tables where the crackers were assembled. Sheets of gold cardboard were piled against the cutting machines. Waterfalls of red streamers ran down the walls.

  The spitting, snapping, banging, firing, pistol-shot strips that made the crackers crack were safely in tubes on the shelves. Three giant vats, of the Ali Baba kind, marked ‘Hats’, ‘Jokes’ and ‘Balloons’ sat under the funnels that automatically topped them up as more and more crackers were filled, packed and dispatched.

  The cracker factory operated all year round but at ­Christmas-time everybody worked harder to fulfil the orders: Cheap crackers. Economy crackers. Family packs. De-luxe boxes. Sets for children, sets for grown-ups, and some boxes marked ‘Adult’, because they contained very tiny briefs. Most of the crackers had long since been dispatched to stores and from stores to tables as everyone made ready for Christmas Day.

  But there was one cracker left to be made. The very last, the very special, the giant charity Christmas cracker, long as a crocodile, fat as a pudding, an enormous golden tube lying on its side, waiting to be stuffed tight as a sausage.

  But for now the factory is empty, because it’s early morning, the bus is just arriving at the gates, and Bill and Fred and Amy and Belle are coming in, special shift, cheerful because it’s Christmas now, and they’ll have a drink when they’re done.

  The factory is empty. Or is it?

  The dog is still asleep in a dream of warm tissue paper, where he crept last night, cold and wet, because somebody left open a small window, and he is only a small dog.

  In he crept, under the red safety light that shone on the gold card beneath the paper angels. He rolled on his back to get dry and ate a marzipan donkey – bad for his teeth, but what can you do? – and fell asleep.

  In they come, neon lights, radio on, and before the dog can say ‘woof’ a golden tunnel opens right before his brown eyes and a pair of firm, spade-like hands shoves all the tissue paper and all the dog right inside one end of the cracker and seals it with a plastic lid.

  He can still see out the other end. He buries his nose deeper, the hair in his ears twitching, as an avalanche of chocolates crashes round his head, followed by an army of teddy bears, an arsenal of pop-guns, a barrage of balloons, beads like hailstones, a string of yo-yos, a peal of whistles, a masked ball of false noses and beards, a plague of clockwork mice and a huddle of evil-looking finger-puppets dressed in black.

  Somebody says, ‘Make it good with the explosives, then – this one has to go with a bang!’

  A fuse-rod of gun-powdery stuff is poked past the dog’s nose (sneeze) and past his tail (twitch), and out through a hole in the lid. The dog thinks of all those circus animals fired out of cannons, or the ones dropped by parachute behind enemy lines. He thinks of Laika, the Soviet dog shot into space, never to come down, and he thinks of the star-dogs, Canis Major and Minor, tracking the dark fields above, glittering guardians of their rougher kind below.

  Perhaps he’s going to join them, sky-set, a new-burned star, Canis Fugit, the flying dog.

  But he doesn’t want to be a flying dog!

  He wants all four paws on the ground.

  Too late!

  They are tying the ribbon at both ends round the giant charity Christmas cracker. He feels himself lifted up and carried out like a canine Cleopatra in a roll of carpet, and there he is on a gilded barge – no, it’s the back of a battered truck – driving towards a large hotel with a green-coated doorman at the door, and a white Christmas tree behind the door in the chandeliered lobby.

  The dog and his cracker are carried in by specially chosen elves on the minimum wage, to the wonderment and applause of all.

  This is the children’s charity party – rich parents have paid a lot so that their children can help children in need without having to meet any of them.

  The dog can hear announcements being made – special prizes, and the best prize of all is for the one who wins the cracker.

  The dog is worried about what will happen when they find him wrapped up inside. He isn’t anyone’s idea of a free gift; not anyone’s idea of a gift at all. He is a stray. He knows no one will want him. He lives in the park and drinks from the fountain. He came with the fair when he was a puppy, and ran round the rides in his criss-cross mongrel colours, until one day the fair packed up, and the caravans pulled away one by one, and he went to sleep for a bit because he didn’t know what was happening, and when he woke up everyone had gone.

  He ran sniffing after them at first, following the scent of diesel and hot dogs, but his paws were slower than their wheels and, though he ran and ran till his pads were raw, at night-time he had to give up and, limping and frightened, through the dark and noise he found his way back to the park.

  He was glad of the rustle of the trees and the soft leaves.

  Sometimes people feed him sandwiches and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they try to catch him. He knows the sound of the van and he runs down the street where he can slither under a gate until they have gone. Sometimes a hu
man sleeps in the park too, and makes a fuss of him, but the humans move on. You can’t rely on people; he knows that.

  Last night was very cold. He was out scavenging for food. The kebab man had gone back to Turkey for Christmas. The dog likes kebabs. He sniffed a bit round the bins but the streets had been cleaned for Christmas.

  As he trotted down the road, keeping to the wall, he saw a window ajar, and the red light inside. It looked warm. The rain had turned to sleet.

  But now. . .

  What will happen when they find him in the cracker?

  He can hear a lot of noise. He’ll keep quiet.

  The hotel ballroom is crammed with children waving raffle ­tickets. It’s time for the prizes to be given away – dolls, games, toy guitars, remote-control cars. There’s a man in a spangly jacket with a microphone. He’s on the stage and he wants the children to sing ‘Jingle Bells’.

  Then it’s time. The Big One. The Cracker. The elves push it on stage.

  What’s the winning number? Yes! It’s 999.

  Two children rush forward – a fat boy in a red Elvis suit and a slim girl in a fake-fur coat. Has there been a mistake? There are two winning tickets. The children glare at each other and take up combat positions at either end of the cracker. The room fills with feral energy as the kids in the room take sides:

  ‘PULL! PULL! PULL!’

  The fat boy wraps his fat hands round one end, and the slim girl digs her heels in and just holds on, like she’s seen her mother do in the sales.

  But then a pale, quiet boy comes forward and gives the master of ceremonies his ticket. He’s got 999 too.

  The master of ceremonies scratches his wig. ‘Whatever is inside this bumper, giant, gigantically exciting cracker, you’ll just have to share.’

  The children in the ballroom boo.

  ‘Sharing is for suckers,’ says the slim girl.

  ‘It’s Christmas!’ says the master of ceremonies, as though repeating the obvious will make the unexpected happen.