Last week I was unaware of what made the Christmas cake dark. I was told by several informed sources that the addition of molasses makes the cake dark. I don’t recall tasting the molasses flavor as a youth, but then there were so many other ingredients which would mask that taste.

One of those ingredients I mentioned last week is the candied fruit. That candied fruit is made from zucca melon. Zucca melon is a tasteless and colorless gourd originally from Africa. It was brought to North America to produce as a substitute for citrus in Christmas cakes. The melon was artificially flavored and colored so it worked perfectly for the cakes.

As a boy, I remember someone growing zucca melon just north of the  Cherry Grove golf course on First Nations land. Our bus driver was Mr. Dawson and  every school day we drove past that field. We watched as the crop grew and finally the harvest came. That was when the melons were stood up on their ends in the field. I didn’t know it then but standing them up was done to keep them visible so the harvesters wouldn’t run over them with their trucks.

In looking for the zucca melon story I came across two interesting web sites. One is docstoc.com, which has an interesting article by Sharon Rempel and Cuyler Page entitled Return of the Zucca Melon. The second site is makemessy.com.

Today we put up our Christmas tree, not as Wally would have done, for he and I would have gone up Secrest Hill to cut one out of the bush. No, Nelly and I opened a box and set up an artificial one.

Wally and I always cut a Douglas fir.(In last years story I called it a spruce tree, but then I remembered after the fact) He would take extra boughs so he could fill in the bare spots an give us a bushy tree.

Our artificial one has no bare spots and doesn’t have quite the the same smell as the fresh one had.

Installing the lights on the fresh tree was a much simpler task as I recall.

The one in the box has the lights on it already. You just have to figure out how they all work together, and then you can get on with decorating the tree.

The Christmas carols are the same as when Wally and Auntie Kay Smith and family celebrated. That is the one thing that remains constant and makes for wonderful nostalgia.

With all the preparation that goes into Christmas, it seems to me it all ends too fast. I’ve always felt that way. Suddenly we are into the new year, box everything up and hunker down for the rest of the winter.