Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?

I would have to become nostalgic and reflective in order to remember back to the time when special additions were a part of notable occasions. These days with our children and grandchildren living at the distance around Australia, each day tends to get treated in more or less the same way when it comes to special foods.

On the other side of the coin, if there is something that takes our fancy, then will get it straight away and not wait for special occasions.

I’ve tried to reflect and take my memory back over time to special dishes associated with Christmas.

My first memory takes me right back to my childhood in the 1940s and 1950s. On Christmas day my mother would make plum pudding, with plum pudding sauce and into the cake before it was cooked were placed coins of different values. There were threepences, sixpences, shillings, two shillings and occasionally a half crown – equal to two shillings and sixpence.

We had to be careful when eating the cake lest we swallowed a coin or two. These days such a presentation would be outlawed and occupational health and safety standards and probably because of modern day Hygenic requirements. But that was then!

Fast forward to a time when we went overseas with our children, we had Christmas dinner in Georgetown the capital of Penang in Malaysia.

On Christmas Day we went to the Tunku Abdul Razak Centre in downtown Georgetown to a restaurant for dinner. I can’t really remember the mail itself but do you recall the “Special“ nature of an extra we ordered. That extra was a bottle of wine – which in Malaysia was somewhat of a rarity. Wine was also very very expensive but we thought we treat ourselves because after all it was Christmas day.

That bottle of wine centralised the attention of all the wait people (In those days, waiters and waitresses) who hovered around our table more or less at every opportunity.

It was to watch us drinking the wine, with glasses never allowed to empty before being topped up. And we did leave a quarter in the bottle for them to share. Happy Christmases should be shared.