Tradition

What does it mean to you?

On January 1st I sat with my candle lit, at the beginning of the New Year. My kitchen table was piled high with the remnants of the previous nights feast and the washing up; that I knew I needed to do. My mind wandered to tradition and what it means to us. Do we pass it down, do we make our own, or is it a bit of both. I saw Mary Beard, who I love, talking about this and it got me thinking. So I put the washing up gloves down and put pen to paper.

On the run up to Christmas this year I was a bit overwhelmed. There just didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to complete the things that I like to do before the Christmas bell tolled and my time was up. December is a frantic month which starts slowly and then at a slight trot, heading up to a canter and then a frantic last two days as I gallop towards the finish line.

I want to be the person who is calm and has it all under control; who has everything wrapped weeks before in beautiful co-ordinated paper and ribbon. But the reality is this is not my way. Still hurtling around on Christmas Eve I was wrapping frantically and writing my last ‘local cards’ before popping in to see friends. Important people who welcomed us here with a bunch of flowers and a card on a cold night in January. Who, although I did not understand at the time, would be pivotal to our life here. Standing by our side in the first few years, holding our hands, helping us find our way. Life has changed since then. Time has shifted, what was once constant company has ebbed away, and we didn’t notice it happening. We miss them. It was time for me to go to see them to tell them I care. That was before heading up to the most beautiful sparkly Christmas party my friends where hosting. Where I met people I love and who care for me, and a few interesting people who I hope to know better in the coming months.

How you spend this time on the run up to Christmas is different for all of us. I think it comes down to what matters to you and for me it matters that my friends know I care, I really care that they understand how much they all mean to me. That my family know they are at my core and without them I would be less. That the effort I make is not for praise it is because there is nothing I desire more that having those I love around me and to feed them.

This year I really made an effort to shop as locally as I could. I have been buying my free range Turkey from a local farmer for as long as I have been in Wales. They don’t come in a fancy box and he doesn’t have a computer system but they are the most beautiful delicious birds and I know they have had a good life. You can taste it. This time as I queued in the shed they told me they couldn’t find my bird. The guy I normally deal with wasn’t there and I have a name that is very common in this neck of the woods. They searched the handwritten list. Knowing where every bird was in their well run system. But mine was nowhere to be seen. I wasn’t worried, this was a local supplier who knows me, they would sort it out. I love it. I love that they know me. That the man who has bred the turkey that will bless my Christmas table knows me. That makes my heart sing. We worked it out, I was on the delivery list, with all my hurtling I had forgotten. My Mum used to say more haste less speed and she was right.

Then I went and collected a meat box from Pentrefelin Farm. Huw Foulkes there is blazing a trail. He is telling us the story of the herd that he nurtures. The calves that stay with their Mother. The milk they share with us and the meat and cheese they produce as a result. He is working with Phil Lewis a local grower and others who value regenerative farming. I love everything they do and the journey to that farm to collect the produce that he sells makes me believe this way of farming has a future. His meat sang from my kitchen table with its story and its provenance. When I gave the Osso Buco from that box to my cousin’s Italian wife her eyes lit up; ‘this is my best Christmas present’, she whispered in my ear.

We had cheese from Carrie Rimes at Cosyn Cymru. She produces excellent cheese from a Church in Bethesda which is just down the road from me. A scientist at heart and full of knowledge about the milk, the process and the produce. We celebrated her work at our table this Christmas. Her soft Brefu Da is beautiful, mild and creamy, made with the milk from Pentrefelin. Circular and inspiring. We also had some of her manchego style cheese, Olwyn Fawr, a nutty little number full of flavour and delicious at its core. And then some Hafod Chedder what a delight that is. You can taste the depth of knowledge and provenance at its core, a real treat.

Add to that amazing fresh veg from the Vale Grocer, Apple Juice from Bryn Cocyn, and bread, what bread, from Tony Wood and his lovely wife Liva at Surdeig. My table was overflowing with deliciousness but also with the love and experience these makers put into making all of this happen.

So when I think about tradition, for me it is not fixed it is a moveable feast that is allowing me to create my own path, a path that is different from my own family Christmases. But the thing that it has at it’s core and the thing that my own Mother taught me, is fill the house with love and the rest will come. Fill it with light and love, don’t mourn the past or those who are no longer present. They guide us with their memory allowing us to furrow our own path.

I will still keep my Christmas book writing down my own menus and memories of this Christmas, but it won’t be a manual for my Son. Just a faint whisper of what we did here at this time. Allowing him to make his own way and stick to the things he wants to but also make his own traditions. So yes, I think we do pass them down but we also make our own. That for me is the perfect combination.

Happy New Year one and all.