Tag: traditions

One a penny, two a penny

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Tray of wonky but beautifully golden brown hot cross buns

I used to be a bit of a hot cross bun purist. Good Friday only. This was the rule when I was a child: I don’t think they were in the supermarkets for so much of the year, and anyway, we didn’t go to the supermarket all that often.

Marrying someone who didn’t grow up with that rule meant that there were hot cross buns in the house more often. I still didn’t buy them outside of Holy Week, you understand, but if they were already there then I might very well eat one or two.

Then in 2024 I was suffering with a diseased gallbladder, with any injudicious consumption of fat resulting in excruciating pain and vomiting, and at a phone appointment early in Lent the dietician recommended hot cross buns as a suitable snack food. So I ate them all year until I had my gallbladder removed in December. And by that point the rule was well and truly broken.

I can’t see myself making them more than once a year, however, because what with the mixing and the waiting for the yeast to froth and the mixing and the raising and the forming into bun shapes and the waiting for them to rise and the making pastry and laying out the cross shapes and the baking and the glazing the process takes all day. Granted, there was some hanging out of washing and eating lunch and a trip to the swings and some weeding in between all that, but I don’t think the buns lost out. That’s just how long they take.

I actually made them yesterday, Maundy Thursday, knowing that this morning would be taken up with church and vaguely remembering that they take a while. I’m glad I did. Even allowing for the fact that I don’t do the Three Hours these days, there wouldn’t have been time.

Anyway, there were hot cross buns for Good Friday. The symbol of the cross is obvious. My mother always used to say that the currants were for the wounds of Christ, though there are far too many per bun.

My recipe (the Good Housekeeping cook book) calls for 100g or 4oz of currants between a dozen buns, and even if you assume that the currants weigh as much as a gram each, that’s still at least three too many. As it is, I can count as many as that in the quarter that’s left of the bun I’m eating now. We’re looking at something more like Saint Sebastian.

There’s also mixed peel in there. I am not aware of any symbolic value attached to that, though if pressed I’d say it was something about bitterness.

If you have no daughters, give them to your sons. I do have a daughter. She is usually partial to a hot cross bun, though these ones were Different and therefore Wrong.

One a penny will not cover the cost of the ingredients, never mind my time. Two a penny, doubly so. Never mind. I enjoyed making them and I am enjoying eating them.

And my husband came home yesterday with another two packets from the supermarket. But those keep, so we’ll be eating them through Easter week. Hot cross buns!

December Reflections 24: traditions

kathleenjowitt3 Comments
A plate of breaded white fish with peas, sweetcorn and potato alphabet letters: some of these spell "Noel"

… are somewhat malleable. No barszcz tonight, I’m not sure if we have any opłatek, and this fish certainly hasn’t been swimming in our bathtub (not that we’ve ever had a carp swimming in our bathtub). Still, it *is* a fish meal. Traditions from my side: tree decorated while listening to the Nine Lessons and Carols. Nobody made mince pies or iced the cake, though; all that’s going to have to wait until my gallbladder comes out.

I’m not feeling up to the midnight service: disappointed about that (it’s very rare that I get an opportunity to concentrate in church these days) but I will revive Pa’s tradition of Not Going To Midnight Mass (And Reading Gray’s Elegy Instead).

December Reflections 6: ornament

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hanging ornaments made from faceted glass beads and spirals of silver-coloured wire arranged around the rim of a crystal glass bowl

I told this story a little while ago, but I’m going to put it here again, because I don’t have any other story that’s half as good for this prompt.

The year my parents separated, there were suddenly two houses and two Christmas trees. And only one of me.

That Christmas was grim, but one thing was worth doing, and has stuck: I bought two identical tree ornaments, one for each of my parent’s Christmas trees. I couldn’t be in two places at once, but I could at least show that I wished I could be.

Over the years, I’ve expanded the practice, and now send tree decorations to both of my parents, the two of my brothers who have moved out, and my in-laws, as well as keeping one for our own tree – so even when I can’t be with someone for Christmas, there can be something of me there.

Sometimes I’ve made decorations. Sometimes I’ve bought several identical ones. Sometimes I’ve got a set and split it up. Glass angels, laser-cut wooden dragons from Ljubljana, crystal stars, iridescent hummingbirds… This year I’ve been threading gorgeous faceted glass beads onto thick silver-plated wire and bending it into abstract spirals. This tradition, born of one of the most painful experiences of my life, has become one of the preparations that I most enjoy.

This year, it’s a particular blessing. I don’t need to think of something new in a year that’s already had more than enough strangeness. I already have this way of letting people know that I’d like to be with them and acknowledging that I can’t. My family is large and far-flung: we would never have got everybody in the same place anyway. (All the same, maybe we’ll give that a go next year! In the meantime, I’ll wrap these little ornaments up and put them in the post…)