I've been blogging for almost six years now and still there are many things I haven't said. Many will remain unsaid, but I think it's time I came clean about Christmas. It is, without a doubt, my least favourite time of year. There. Said it.
But the period immediately after Christmas is one of the best in the calendar. I wake up a new woman on December 26, happy that the often over-sweetened season is over, that life can regain its sweet/sour balance with a little less sugar and little more tartness. It's no coincidence that this is the best season for lemons, and I have made several lemon tarts since Christmas for meals shared with friends. This is today's, still warm and wobbly.
I've been looking for the perfect lemon tart recipe for years (it all started with the holiday in France before the children were born when Simon and I spent a fortnight driving from place to place sampling lemon tarts at every patisserie we found in search of the best lemon tart). This is a pretty good version, a blend of the over-the-top recipe in The Art of the Tart and the sensible recipe in Delia's Summer Collection. Just right for January.
Oh, I'm totally with you on the subject of Christmas, Jane, as I may have said before! Can't wait for Boxing day and I sigh with relief as the last of the leftovers are finished, and the bones are stock simmering for soup. Lemon tart sounds good - just starting to think what to cook for daughter's birthday on the 4th!
Posted by: Jane | January 02, 2011 at 14:00
Hooray for the truth about xmas! I gave it up a few years ago & it was the most brilliant thing I've done. (You, of course, may have to wait for your children to get homes of their own before you can swing it.) After a few years of zero Christmas-ing, I started to return, but only to the things that I missed: I got a tree so that the house would smell beautifully of pine and I sent cards, grateful for the excuse to keep in touch with old friends. I'm still a no-presents person, and this year we made a lovely cassoulet on Christmas day.
Posted by: Roby | January 02, 2011 at 14:12
Hooray its been said, I'm the same, but, I blame my Mother! Now people don't beleive me, but its true she used to make herself 'ill' for Christmas day.
You're right about Lemon Tarts, this is the perfect time to make them - when you do find that perfect recipe please, please let me know
Julie xxxxxxxx
Posted by: Julie | January 02, 2011 at 14:46
Hi Jane,
Christmas is really very bitter-sweet; just try to get over the sickly sentimentality of the things you see - in shop displays, movies, shallow celebrations out of the context of the real thing.
It's incredibly important and wonderfully profound.
Don't give up on it, bake your pie on December 25, it's perfectly fitting.
Posted by: Agnieszka | January 02, 2011 at 14:58
Yes! Agreed! I always say the best day of the year is the day AFTER Christmas when the tree comes down, everything gets swept away, leftover sweets get dumped and I don't have to think about it for months. Little by little I scale back, but since I do live with Patient Husband I can't give it up completely.
Posted by: denice barker | January 02, 2011 at 14:58
Before I read your new post I had just put a lemon curd and apple pie into the oven. The last of the ham bones have been simmered into an intense stock and the cards tidied into a neat pile.
Posted by: Lucille | January 02, 2011 at 15:20
I agree with you - way too much hype about the holiday I think has soured it for me. I feel like I'm going through the motions, especially for my 6 year old daughter.
Happy New Year!
Posted by: Anita | January 02, 2011 at 15:50
I'm another member of the non-Christmas loving club! Perhaps we should all spend Christmas travellilng the world in search of the perfect tart instead!
Posted by: Frieda Oxenham | January 02, 2011 at 16:08
CK and I travelled around Victoria, Australia doing the same thing with carrot cake!
Posted by: trash | January 02, 2011 at 16:11
Thank you! I always claim to love Christmas, but then spend three days following passed out from all of the so called fun. It is exhausting to say the least. I love the idea of the kind of Christmas I think it should be. Maybe that is what I need to strive for. ~Kelly
unDeniably Domestic
Posted by: Kelly | January 02, 2011 at 16:48
Happy New Year Jane,I love Christmas even the work although now with grown up children and grandchildren the work is shared.We have 3 Christmas family meals.Now its time for rest. I am about to sit under a tree in the garden and read my last Dorothy Whipple. What bliss. All the famliy is away for a week at the beach.
Posted by: Merilyn | January 02, 2011 at 19:43
I agree with lots of you that Christmas has become over-the-top. With no children to entertain, my husband and I take time out from our busy lives to stay at home, sit back and relax, go to Midnight Mass, exchange a few, really wanted/useful presents. Having said that - I enjoy the lights and window displays in the West End and spending all year looking for / making presents for special people.
Love lemon tart!
Happy New Year
Posted by: geraldine | January 02, 2011 at 19:52
My main problem with the holiday is that everything is so crammed in, especially here in the US, where you are logjammed with Thanksgiving in addition to Christmas and New Years craziness within a little over a month. Add a few untimely birthdays in there and it's overwhelming, not fun.
That lemon tart looks heavenly!
Posted by: patty | January 02, 2011 at 20:16
This year I had the best December in years... I use to hate the so-called "Christmas spirit" but since I've moved away from the city it all got so much better! Where I now live there are no shop windows, no rush, no Christmas music in the background - just snow and cows and berries all around. Now I actually enjoy the season!
Posted by: Concha | January 02, 2011 at 20:55
I'm right there with you too. Christmas is so over-hyped that no one could live up to the standard "perfect Christmas".
It's so much nicer to live in our not so perfect world the rest of the year.
And I LOVE a fresh new anything -- new day, new week, new month, but especially a fresh new year.
Posted by: Dee | January 02, 2011 at 21:47
Before I had children, I enjoyed the quiet, sacred beauty of Christmas...a time to hear my own breathing in the cold. Now I feel so much pressure to make it a happy time for my children that I am often sick during the time surrounding the holiday, this year included. I need to break free somehow. I am still working out how to do that.
Posted by: Josefina | January 02, 2011 at 22:23
Christmas is not my favourite time by a long stretch but like you, the fun time kicks in on the 26th and everything seems possible.
Posted by: Denise Moulun-Pasek | January 02, 2011 at 22:58
I love Christmas, I don't understand being sick of such a beautiful holiday. What I can understand, however, is being sick of the exploitation and perversion that the commercial world has put upon it.
Also Christmas is technically 12 days, not one.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Posted by: Kristina | January 03, 2011 at 01:11
I love Christmas . . . but, I love the beginning of a shiny New Year even more!!
Best Wishes for a superb twenty eleven!
Posted by: sarah london | January 03, 2011 at 02:00
I, too, love Christmas. Living in New York City in December is beautiful. As a child I always liked to visit NY to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. And now that I've lived here for 25 years it still takes my breath away every year. And the store windows are magical. It's a great time to re-connect with friends and family. I wouldn't have it any other way!
Posted by: Greg | January 03, 2011 at 03:18
Yup, Christmas is always better once over. As for the lemon tart issue, it is simply my most favourite desert, provided it is good and lemony and good and tart! Happy New Year. I do get so much pleasure from your blog.
Posted by: Lynne | January 03, 2011 at 05:53
It is so important that women, who are usually (though not always!!) the arbiters of all things festive in the home, take ownership of the Christmas period, and make it personal. It isn't 'sickly' or 'sentimental' to spend some time in the holidays with friends and/or family that you love and whos company you enjoy. Nor is it 'over commercial and cynical' to cook foods that mark out the christmas period as a time of celebration, provided they are bought with care, and don't leave you with a larder full of left overs to deal with in January.Make Christmas YOUR type of Christmas, as simple, or as lavish as suits you and those you love. Spend what you can afford, enjoy what you have, and perhaps your New Years Resolution will be 'A good, heart-satisfying christmas for 2011'. Lemon tart looks fab Jane, and it's almost time for marmalade oranges to come in too- yum. Look forward to enjoying your blog in 2011.
Best Wishes to you and your family.
Posted by: Penny | January 03, 2011 at 10:50
Happy New Year
a bright lemon tart is the perfect antidote to January grey.
Christmas is such a tricky time for so many people. It's incredibly helpful to acknowledge that many folk find it exhausting/sad/lonely and to come out as a non-Christmas person doesn't garner straightforward responses from others usually.
Anyway, a long-winded way of saying good for you, and the year has turned - so spring and your tulips won't be as far off as they were before Christmas
Posted by: oxslip | January 03, 2011 at 11:13
I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas. I love the Christmas story, the carols, the candles, the tree, the lights, the mince pies, the mulled wine, the cards, even the round robin letters ... but I hate the crass commercialism, the over consumption and the shameful waste that has become so much a part of it. That and the overwhelming pressure, particularly on mothers, to deliver 'the perfect Christmas' and the guilt when, inevitably, we fail to do so. I think Penny's right and that we should recover ownership of the festive season before we're tempted just to give up on it altogether, which would be a great shame.
Posted by: Just Gai | January 03, 2011 at 13:14
Thank heavens, I loathe the thing too. But then, it's not my faith, I'm usually working and playing chief cook and bottle washer for the in-laws as well.
Never mind, on to the New Year. I have a great recipe for lemon tart involving lemon rind and icing sugar in the pastry and 5 lemons in the curd. Let me know if you would like the full thing and where to send it to if you do.
Posted by: Naomi | January 03, 2011 at 13:50
Hey you're back - Happy New year! Just thought I'd wade into the great Christmas debate. It's an odd time of year isn't it? There is such enormous pressure to get involved and to be happy, happy, happy. Personally, I love Christmas - mostly for the rituals it involves: the tree, the cake, the stockings. For me, New Year's eve is the killer. I HATE it. Happy to be on the other side though!
Posted by: Charlotte | January 03, 2011 at 16:03
I loathe Christmas with a vengeance but do enjoy waking up on January 1st with a brand shiny new year ahead of me. It's worth making it through Christmas to get to the New Year.
Posted by: Elizabeth | January 03, 2011 at 17:23
Oh dear........Christmas is hard work, but the joy seeing my family open their prezzies and enjoying the dinner ive cooked is great!!!! roll on the spring and all the beautiful bulbs we planted!! Happy new year!!!
Posted by: jacky | January 03, 2011 at 17:34
Christmas would be better without all those other people. I dont care how they celebrate it, why get involved in mine? Expectations & so on. Let alone in-laws, who even if (I have heard it is possible) they are reasonable the rest of the year, go odd at this season.
Best lemon tart of memory? At Just a Tart in NYC...
Posted by: MissHeliotrope | January 03, 2011 at 22:18
Oh how agree with all you "bah humbugs". My memories of Christmases past were father annually getting sick on too many rum-laced eggnogs and upchucking on the tree. To this day I have no desire to drink eggnog, trim a tree nor celebrate Christmas in any way, shape or form.
Posted by: niki | January 03, 2011 at 22:24
I can taste the pucker of that tart all the way over here in Wyoming. Happy New Year!
Posted by: Juti | January 03, 2011 at 22:53
Amen! Happy New Year to you, dear Jane. A tart lemon tart and a fresh year are just the antidote to December.
Posted by: Mady | January 04, 2011 at 00:49
Yes, I'm with you--being forced to spend time with family with a forced smile on my face when I would rather be almost anywhere else. Had to do a major adjustment when I realized yesterday I was actually beyond not liking Christmas/"The Holidays" and downright depressed. If only Christmas was as fun as the 4th of July!
A Tart Tart sounds like the perfect way to cleanse one's palette and start a New Year with a new taste.
Posted by: Diane | January 04, 2011 at 00:58
It has occurred to me re Christmas; the little baby Jesus didn't have to put up with all his relatives coming around, did he? Just a few strangers dropping by with expensive (if not all that interesting to babies) gifts...
Posted by: MissHeliotrope | January 05, 2011 at 08:51
I agree with you Jane, lemon tart is much needed after Christmas! I can't quite believe it, but my husband made one for a New Year's Eve meal combining the very same two recipes you mentioned above, it was delicious and just what was needed! Happy New Year to you and your family.
Posted by: kim | January 06, 2011 at 08:15
Jane...you said its the perfect combination of two versions but... print the recipe you concocted! PLEASE?
Posted by: Martha Blom | January 16, 2011 at 18:09