12 December 2003
Putting small coins in Chrismas pudding. Quaint tradition or a really stupid idea?
Anna saysFor anyone that doesn't live in a culture that traditionally introduces small, perfect-for-choking-sized foreign objects to their food for a laugh, I should probably explain what we're talking about here.
At the end of Christmas dinner, just when you've eaten 50% of the your food intake for the year in one sitting, the Christmas pudding gets brought out.
Christmas pudding is a moist, rich, heavy, dense steamed fruit pudding, usually eaten with whipped cream, clotted cream or brandy butter. It is the equivalent of eating 15 solid blocks of lard and is designed to kill you.
Cleverly disguised as food, it's usually about the same size, shape and consistency as a bowling ball.
After being brought into the room and placed on the specially strengthened area of the dining table the lights are turned out and the Christmas pudding doused in brandy and set alight.
Then everyone gathered around the table says "Ooooooh!" and squints through the darkness at a blue flame so weak that only Superman or NASA could be sure it was there.
Well, them and the person that's convinced that there is no flame there and puts their face over it to check. They're pretty sure that there is a flame there too. Because their nostril hairs have shrivelled up and they can't see.
The lights are switched back on and the pudding is divided up, with the most going to whoever you want to die first.
And then you eat it. But you don't eat it fast.
Partly because you can't, because every spare millimetre of space in your body is taken up with food, you feel like there is food in your nasal cavities, the spaces between your organs, in your ears and hair follicles.
But you couldn't eat it fast anyway, because for a special treat, someone's stuffed your dessert with metal pieces, and it being quite so dense, you'll have to break it into tiny-tiny crumblets before you know it's safe to eat (which, as we've already discussed, it isn't, but for different reasons).
People could choke easily, anyone with fillings lives in fear, children tear into their food with a prospectors greed, and you're not exactly going to make your fortune out of it.
And Christ only knows what happens if you put a piece in the microwave.
Still, it may be one of the most stupid ideas in the world, but you have to do it, because it's tradition, so you just, you know, have to.
Just because...