Humbug!

Recipes

For years, Christmas was a bit of a debauch, really. It was celebrated with misrule, mirth, mayhem, mischief, and malice (and those are only the Ms). Cold and want were at the bottom of it all. Winters were severe. Harvest long over, the days were dull and short, the ground hard, the land snowy, and the rivers frozen. Life seemed at an end. Something had to be done to make the long nights and cold days bearable.

For the ancient Romans it was the winter festival, Saturnalia, honoring the god Saturn who made the season tolerable. For the Greeks it was Brumalia, the birthday of the unconquered sun, held on the 22 of December. When Christianity began to establish a toe-hold, the birth of Jesus Christ was conveniently celebrated around that same already-established holiday time. In wasn't until the fourth century that the date of the nativity was arbitrarily and officially proclaimed as December 25.

From its earliest days, the holiday celebration was characterized by merry-making, eating, and drinking — all OK by me. Small tokens and gifts were exchanged, and evergreen boughs were brought indoors as a reminder that life still stirred somewhere. There was little reverent or religious about the celebrations (a complaint still heard today). Heck, for a long time it was downright bacchanal.

By the 12th century, the character of the Christmas season was profoundly ritualized. The Lord of Misrule, the Abbot of Unreason, and his court presided over a topsy-turvy world — one that was not always nice. Christmas time was for fanciful costuming, masking, and mummery, yes, but also for vicious parodying of the rituals of church, state, and society, as well as veiled threats on person and property. Wassailing, today an innocent form of caroling, was a house-to-house begging ritual that was a put-up-or-suffer-the-consequences situation more similar to trick-or-treat.

Then, in 1647, Christmas was abolished in England thanks to the tight-fisted Puritan Oliver Cromwell. Churches were locked and shops were ordered by law to remain open. Anyone caught celebrating Christmas, a Popish day "dedicated to excess," was fined or imprisoned. Harsh.

Things were similar in Puritan Boston of 1712. Cotton Mather unreeled his laundry list of anti-Christmas sentiment claiming that the "Feast of Christ's Nativity is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking and in all Licentious Liberty...by Mad Mirth, by Long Eating, by Hard Drinking, by Lewd Gaming, by Rude Reveling ..." Oh my. I don't really see the problem, but the Puritans did.

But by the mid-19th century, people on both sides of the ocean had had enough. They wanted Christmas back. The signal event in America was brought about by a land-rich New York professor of Hebrew named Clement Moore. As entertainment for his children he penned "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ("T’was the night before Christmas…"). Moore's bandy-legged, sack-toting, pipe-smoking, "jolly old elf" with his "broad face and a little round belly; that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly," was a benign Djinn, a precursor of the roly-poly Santa to come. Previously, Father Christmas bore a club, had a wreath of holly round his head, showed mischief in his eyes, and held a brimming glass in his hand. He was more party animal than the child-loving, gentle, generous gift-giver he would, alas, become. This familiar Claus was rounded out (so to speak) beginning in 1863 by political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, further stamping out the rowdy, raucous Christmas and making the holiday an indoor, family-centered holiday.

In England it was Charles Dickens who remade the holiday. Dashed off in three months, A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies at five shillings apiece. If Christmas in the long ago past had had its malicious side, the Christmas of Charles Dickens was all about sharing, kindness, love, snow falls, lamplight, sleigh rides, ghosts at midnight, turkeys, plum puddings, last chances, and redemption through good works. Scrooge had been through the bacchanalian Christmases of the past. He knew them for what they were (not what they would soon become). "Humbug!" was the right response of a responsible man. So we should not be amazed to find Scrooge railing: "If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stick of holly through his heart." The old man was no fan of misrule.

The metamorphosis of the humbug-spouting Uncle Ebenezer into a merry, kindly old man evidently touched a chord in the hardening heart of a newly industrialized society. A Christmas Carol transcended mere literature and passed into the realm of legend. Scrooge went from being a name to a noun, and the story quickly became part of the shared lore of the English-speaking world. Today when someone utters the phrase "the Christmas spirit," we think of an image decorated by Dickens.

So Christmas may have been domesticated, but let's stop pretending: we'd love to return to the drinking and feasting of yore. Let's have a big Wassail bowl, turkey and ham, gooey potatoes rich with cream and cheese, a sugar plum chutney, a Chocolate Plum Pudding Cake, and some Humbugs for good measure. Laugh out loud, snap the crackers, thump the table, ask for "more please, Sir!" — go overboard at the groaning board, make merry and mischief. Yikes! It's Christmas. Misrule rules.

Edward Bottone, a food and lifestyle journalist, is Chef/Instructor in the Culinary Arts program at Drexel University and has been a radio talk show host and TV presenter, and is also a food stylist and photographer.

Wassail Bowl, from Edward Bottone.

Serves 16

3 oranges
Approximately 30 whole cloves
1 gallon unfiltered apple cider
8 cups cranberry juice
1 cup sugar
4 cinnamon sticks
2 to 3 teaspoons Angostura bitters
2 tablespoons whole allspice berries
1 cup amber rum
1 cup dark rum

Stud the oranges with the cloves. In a large heavy bottomed pot mix together the cider, cranberry juice, sugar, oranges, cinnamon sticks and all spice berries and heat to a simmer. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and then allow to steep on the lowest flame for 1 1/2 hours. Add the rums just before serving. Strain into a heat-proof punch bowl and ladle into cups or keep on the heat and serve as needed to guests just in from the cold.

Chocolate Plum Pudding Cake, from Edward Bottone.

Because dessert for so many means chocolate, and because Christmas plum pudding is a established Victorian imperative (even though few today actually eat it) I have combined the best of these two desires. Make a day or two ahead.

For the cake:

1/2 cup dried dates, chopped
1/4 cup glacéed cherries, chopped
1/4 cup glacéed orange peel
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup dark rum
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs
One 5 ounce can prune juice
1/2 cup buttermilk

For the frosting:

3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 pound good quality semi-sweet chocolate
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups sour cream, cold
2 cups walnuts, toasted, finely chopped

Pre-heat oven to 350ºF. Mix the dried fruit with the rum and let sit. Butter a jelly roll pan, line with parchment or waxed paper, and butter and flour the parchment. In one bowl, mix together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and spices. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk together the butter and eggs. Add the juice and buttermilk. Now add this mixture to the dry ingredients, whisking to blend thoroughly. Drain the dried fruit mixture and save the liquid. Fold plumped fruit into the batter. Spread the batter evenly on the prepared jelly roll pan. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan. Loosen the cake from the sides of the pan with a knife and flip over onto a work surface. Peel off the parchment or waxed paper. Slice a half inch off the cake on all four sides. Now, cut the cake crosswise into three equal rectangles with a serrated knife. (May be made 1 to 2 days ahead.)

Make the frosting by combining the reserved soaking liquid with cream and butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan over moderate heat until butter is melted. Add the chocolate, cinnamon, and vanilla and whisk until melted and smooth. Remove from the heat. Allow to cool a few minutes before stirring in the sour cream. Chill in the fridge until frosting is thickened but still spreadable.

Place the first cake rectangle on a serving platter. Spread about 1/2 cup of the frosting on top. Sprinkle with some of the chopped walnuts. Top with another piece of the cake, frost, and sprinkle with nuts. Add the top piece of cake. Frost this layer and the sides of the cake. With the remaining frosting fill up your pastry bag fitted with a star tip and decorate the perimeter of the top with rosettes of frosting. Press the remaining chopped walnuts onto the sides of the cake. Clean the serving platter with a damp paper towel. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving.

Humbugs, from Edward Bottone.

Not the black and white stripy ones you get in England, but tasty just the same.

5 cups Demerara sugar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1/2 pint water
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
A few drops peppermint oil

Put all the ingredients except the peppermint oil into a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil with the lid on. Do not stir.

Using a candy thermometer boil to 290ºF.

Remove carefully from the heat and pour onto a well-oiled marble slab or into a nonstick shallow baking sheet. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then pour half a teaspoon of peppermint oil on the toffee.

When it is cool enough to handle, work the toffee, with oiled hands, pulling the sides into the center. Do this for a few minutes; then shape into a long roll and cut off after dinner-mint sized pieces with scissors.

Cool and wrap individual toffees in colored, grease-proof paper, twisting the ends.

Header photo by the Drexel University Food Styling program, illustration by Thomas Nast, "The Cantankerous Cook" photograph from Hulton Archive/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.