24 December: Christmas Eve

In our grandparents’ days, we Italians were used to observing a strict fast on Christmas Eve. Nowadays, instead, frugality has been left down in the cellar while upstairs in the kitchen everyone is waiting eagerly to tuck in to a Pantagruelian feast.

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water!” writes Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Adams’ pungent wit serves to remind us that there is someone in a state of trepidation, and that ‘someone’ is none other than Mr Stomach who knows full well that a tour de force is about to begin shortly and that it can be expected to carry on until January 6th. Perhaps he wishes that, at least on Christmas Eve, we could go back to our grandparents’ sensible habit.

With that in mind, the very least we can do is to dedicate some raw vegetables to Mr S – Christmas style, of course.

Name Day:
St Irma