At this time of year, food is so much more than just what we eat
The Tesco Christmas delivery slots are filling up fast, our sausagey fingers grabbing at space, dragging potatoes into our baskets, and biscuits, and various selections of butter. Our relationship with food alters slightly at this time of year, doesn’t it? It sways and fattens.
Christmas ads show families literally applauding as a glittering feast appears on their table – this is food as performance, food as trophy, food as glue. A synthetic memory, nostalgia for turkeys past, for dinners when everyone laughed and drank and nobody mentioned the bad thing. Shop-bought sandwiches this month come heavy with mayonnaise and meat, and sprinkled with crispy onions – the idea is that, like Willy Wonka’s Three Course Dinner chewing gum, which gave the illusion you were eating tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie, one bite of a Pret Christmas sandwich should not just offer a whole meal, but also transport you far far from the staff room of the shoe shop or sticky office desk to that hallowed cosy kitchen surrounded by people who love you. Each bite is its own little dinner – the first pulls out a chair, the second asks how your day was, the third rubs your shoulders, the fourth (you pick some matter perhaps now from between your teeth and take a swig of cooling tea) has remembered the book you mentioned earlier in the year and shyly bought it for you, signed.