What is, or rather what is not, a Christmas cake?
Christmas is an occasion when people of all ages, shapes, sizes and opinions come together for a time of fun, frivolity and food!
This particular item comes from the immediate post-war years when hope was once more a viable option and the future was beginning to look a lot more promising.
The old Victorian ideals imported from Germany by Prince Albert, The Prince Regent, came once more to the fore.
The magazine ‘Womans Illustrated’ no longer exists but was, I believe, subsumed along with other such publications, into a a larger publishing company.
Some of the ideas are interesting to say the least and tend to concentrate on children and family but then why not?
Though the war created a terrible degree of individual suffering, it can be said that the suffering of the children and broken famillies left back at home suffered a very different yet similar experience.
With the new emphasis strictly on fun and frolics much was made of the new era of peace and plenty just over the horizon.
Some of the language, such as ‘come again quickies’ would lead to raised eyebrows in todays society but seventy years ago was perfectly acceptable.
Such is the way the world turns. Just the feel and the scent of these elderly documents and the thought of the number of fingers and minds that have touched them in the intervening years could soften the hardest edges of current day ‘political correctness’
So bake on, in the form and style that most ‘tickles your fancy’ and let the fun begin . . .
