Twixmas and goodbye 2009

For my American readers, I want to share the lessons I have learned about important distinctions between:

fruit cake and Christmas pudding
Christmas pudding and Christmas cake

The best thing is just to relax: Christmas pudding though it sounds like it could be a fruitcake, isn't. Actually, it's more like a posh fly cemetery where they have all been pickled in brandy. Fly cemetery is the fairly common name for a cake-y thing with sultanas and dates also, I think, chopped into bits, hence the name. Tasty if you do not consume it while that name is on your mind.


Christmas cake is like Christmas pudding except cake-i-ier. The beautiful cake above--a gift from a multi talented friend of mine who claims not to like Christmas--has enough hootch in it that too many whiffs of it could preclude your driving legally in this country. Once I got the heart to cut into this piece of artwork I discovered that my most favourite part is the marzipan tucked like a special Christmas present in the toe of your stocking between the drunken cake and the icing.

Folks here seem to like Christmas pud and Christmas cake with cream on it, but my preferred mode of eating it is with a couple dollops of vanilla yoghurt on it.

2009 has been a year of discoveries --not just about the mysteries of Christmas treats. This evening is the time for the sort of reflection that looks in and out at the same time. I learned more about this amazing place where I live now. I learned more about my friends and family in my first home and how to reconcile the pain of the dividedness of my life. I learned yet again that I am much too easily hurt by what people say about me. I learned that a little step in the right direction can add up. 2009, like most years, was a grab bag of wonderful and terrible things: some of which I will be happy to relegate to history; others I will cherish like the Velveteen rabbit.

May your 2010 be a year of mysteries and wonders and more laughing than crying.

Auld Lang Syne