Stir Up Sunday: The Secrets of Wishtide

Stir Up Sunday

The Secrets of Wishtide by Kate Saunders

published 2016

[Excerpt] The secret of my mincemeat was handed down to me by my dear mother. In a word, suet. This must be chopped into the smallest possible pieces, thoroughly mixed with your dried fruits, sugar and spices, and the bowl set beside a hot fire until the fat has melted and the fruit gleams. Then leave it in the pantry or scullery overnight. Matt was very fond of my mincemeat; under his greedy influence I added more brandy and sugar to my mother’s recipe.

Every Stir-up Sunday, he would sing ‘Dame Get Up and Bake your Pies’ – though it was the week before the beginning of Advent, and he was supposed to be thinking of the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. Pies didn’t come into it. Dearest Matt, he rejoiced in the feasting and fun of Christmas. ‘Our Saviour came into this world as a little child,’ he would say. ‘It never does us any harm to remember the child in ourselves.’

 

comments: We do like a Stir Up Sunday entry – we have had several blogposts on the subject (here and here)  despite never having partaken in the custom in real life. As explained previously:

Today is the last Sunday before Advent, and traditionally this was Stir Up Sunday: the day you made your Christmas pudding. Everyone takes a turn to stir, and makes a wish. And the first church reading for the day in the Book of Common Prayer starts "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". 

Kate Saunders died during 2023 – I didn’t know her but it is clear she was a much-loved author and friend, and there was a lot of sadness around. She wrote in many different genres: this book is the first in her series of historical mystery stories featuring Laetitia Rodd, an archdeacon’s widow in Victorian times who works as a private enquiry agent. Well (as we’re fond of saying round her) that could go either way – there are some pretty terrible books along those lines. But absolutely not: this series is a charming delight, I like them very much.

In this one she is investigating a series of misfortunes befalling an upmarket family: this comes out in a series of episodes, and it is sometimes hard to keep straight the various generations of women, villains and seducers, but that didn’t stop me enjoying it very much.

When Christmas comes, Laetitia and her brother play a traditional game:

In the early evening, when the smallest of the small fry were in their beds and the racket had lessened a little, Fred challenged me to one of our games of Snapdragon. This was not a dignified affair; the dish was placed on the hearthrug before the fire and Fred and I knelt on the floor beside it, while the children shouted out our scores and ate the burnt currants.

Snapdragon is a parlour game dating back to the 16th century. According to Wikipedia, ‘brandy was heated and placed in a wide shallow bowl; raisins were placed in the brandy which was then set alight. Typically, lights were extinguished or dimmed to increase the eerie effect of the blue flames playing across the liquor’ – the players then had to eat the burnt fruit.

One more think I learned from the book – assuming it was as well-researched as it seems: a character goes to France, and he takes his carriage with him on the cross-channel ferry and ‘the carriage was unloaded by means of a crane’. Very surprising.