Christmas pudding coins or tokens
20 September 2006 - by Simone
I’m seeking opinions from all over about these, so feel free to weigh in!
It’s an old English/British tradition to have a home cooked Christmas pudding which has silver coins or tokens mixed into it - this is something my family has always done. If you find a coin it will bring you luck for the year.
The tradition started dying out as silver coins were replaced by base metals, which people felt (correctly, I’m sure!) weren’t a good idea to cook with. However, my Nan always had a stash of threepences which she would exchange with us for ‘real’ money if we found them in our piece of pudding. Over the years lots of the coins went missing and when she sadly passed away a few years ago the coins were inherited by my aunty.
My Mum kept nagging me to make a set of special silver tokens for her to use in her own puddings to keep the tradition alive. And so finally last year I managed it and made her a set out of pure silver with vintage Christmas illustrations etched onto them. And they were a hit!
And here is a little set of them as made this year.
So this year I’m thinking about making sets and packaging them to sell to people who would like to keep this tradition going - along with my family’s old recipes for pudding and brandy sauce. They’d be an heirloom that could be passed on, of course.
But will anyone outside of my family actually want something like this?
I now know that Christmas puddings simply don’t feature in the US and I’m not sure how many people in the rest of the Anglo world would make their own puddings (although the tokens can simply be slotted in even after cooking) or would know about this tradition.
Let me know what you think!
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Oh my gosh, YES, YEESSS!!! *jumps up and down* Oh my, do it, do it. I love the christmas pudding tradition, do you pour brandy on yours and light it on fire like we do too? That was like the highlight of my christmas day as a child, to see the grownups playing with fire, ehehe.
Christmas is just such a special time and I’m sure plenty of people other than me would also be interested, I am a christmas FREAK! =P
I love the heirloom quality of them, really push that I think!
Go for it =) Now you’ve got me all excited about christmas, lol
by MissMeshell on 20 September 2006 at 1:04 am |
Fantastic idea! We don’t do that in our family but your tokens are the sort of thing that could START a family off on a new/old tradition!!
by kirsty on 20 September 2006 at 7:33 am |
These are great! We don’t have that tradition here (Austria), but I always thought British Christmas customs were somewhat fun, and I’d guess there still are some families who stick to them. If I ever move to GB (or Australia, or what have you), I would love to use beautiful things like these here!
by Barbara on 20 September 2006 at 6:28 pm |
[…] Given the wild enthusiasm of Little Miss Meshell (who has an Etsy shop with gorgeous things, as well as a Flickr account and - for reasons we are both yet to fathom - a Myspace account) and others for the idea of making pure silver Christmas pudding tokens, I am going to do it! […]
by make me » blog archive » Meshell made me do it! - a blog for simone walsh jewelry + objects on 22 September 2006 at 1:46 am |