It’s that time when things are brightly and beautifully decorated and the Yuletide spirit brings good cheer and bon-homie & lights us up into wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ across time zones and continents wherever our loved ones, friends and well wishers are placed. Since our early days we’ve associated Christmas (colloquially called Bada-Din) with two symbols of love and gifts, Santa Claus & Christmas Cakes, which we all look forward to !
As it always happens with me, there’s a big flashback of childhood memories where we siblings lovingly recall someone who was akin to Santa & would treat the family a virtual ‘Fest’ of cakes during every Xmas for more than two decades. Singh Uncle was Dad’s old buddy from his early days and it was a ritual followed that our entire family (my parents & we 5 siblings) visited his home on Christmas Day every year in Mahanagar, Lucknow.
Highlight of this trip for us was the unlimited amount of plum cakes (and other goodies) Singh Uncle would urge us to gorge on. Our Mom’d give us the ‘stern eye’ with a bid to intervene after we’d had 2-3 pieces of cake (to her it wasn’t proper if 5 children hogged like this) but the kind hosts would smile. Uncle would say ‘Inhi logon ke liye to banwaya hain, let them eat’! Having had variety of cakes since then, I never found the same taste.
We may wonder, what’s the difference between a normal fruit cake & a Christmas cake ? Well traditionally Christmas cakes are like a labour of love, there is a feeding process with the Christmas cake which gives it a richer flavour. The longer you feed the cake, the better it is supposed to be. A lot of people who make their own Christmas cakes start the process around 6 months before the big day. Singh Uncle would order special Christmas cakes from local maker/bakery months in advance and preserve them in big, dry trunks.
Singh Uncle passed away more than two decades ago as did our Dad and later Mom. We nostalgically reminisce these people specially on Xmas day, not just for the wonderful cakes but for the kindness and benevolence that they spread in the true Yuletide spirit ! At a time when Happy Xmas tidings are now more confined to social media messaging, Singh Uncle and his ilk remain symbols of the real Santa like experiences we truly had !
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