Is cake is the only sacred Christmas food tradition left?

Christmas is coming (what, you didn’t know?) and all people are talking about is the ham, the turkey and the bucketloads of prawns. They’re missing the point. The entire raison d’être of Christmas dining is that you get to eat the stuff you can only eat at Christmas and at no other time of the year.

You can buy ham on the bone at your supermarket deli counter all year round, order a turkey club at a café and take a bucketload of prawns to the beach any time you like. Our precious Christmas family rituals are being eroded by the tyranny of convenience.

So what’s left that truly signifies Christmas feasting, apart from drinking champagne for breakfast? The answer is cake, of course – in all its festive forms.

If somebody gave you a tray of mince pies in March, you’d think they were losing it. And if you were served steamed plum pudding in September, that would bring your total number of plum puddings for the year to two.

Loading

That’s just plain wrong. Mince pies are Christmas. Plum pudding is Christmas. Like Santa’s reindeers, they bring Christmas with them.

But the best thing is that eating cake is not only allowed at Christmas, it’s encouraged, endorsed, sanctioned and virtually mandated by state and federal parliaments.

Other people get upset if you don’t eat cake. You’re allowed to have a seafood allergy, dislike turkey or detest brussels sprouts, but nobody likes the person who says, “No, thanks” when the plum pudding is passed around the table. Or the one who secretly shoves Aunty May’s cellophane-wrapped fruit cake to the back of the cupboard.

Lucky for us, we get to embrace everyone else’s Christmas cakes as well as our own. Italy’s cupola-domed panettone makes the ideal breakfast on Christmas Day, alongside fresh peaches and berries. Germany’s yeasty stollen sweet bread, with its secret tunnel of marzipan, is perfect with morning coffee before the hordes arrive.