hristmas is about community, collaboration, celebration.
Done right, Christmas can be an antidote to the Me First mentality that has rebranded capitalism as neo-liberalism. The shopping mall isn’t our true home, nor is it public space, though, as libraries, parks, playgrounds, museums and sports facilities disappear, for many the fake friendliness of the mall is the only public space left, apart from the streets.
I think we can all reclaim the spirit of Christmas – less shopping, more giving, less spending, more time for friends, including the joyfulness of cooking and eating together, and sharing what we have with others.
There’s a sign over the entrance to Shakespeare and Company: Be Not Inhospitable To Strangers Lest They Be Angels In Disguise.
Shakespeare and Company has been a bookshop in Paris since 1919. Begun by the legendary Sylvia Beach, from Pennsylvania, the bookstore became a second home to all those famous pre-war Americans – Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Beach was the first publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The store closed during the Second World War, and eventually reopened under its original name, opposite Notre Dame, run by George Whitman, an ex-GI who loved books and Paris in equal measure.
George never closed the store on Christmas Day; usual opening hours of midday to midnight were observed, and George cooked a meal for anyone who wanted to eat – that has included Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller and a batch of Beat poets. Ginsberg read ‘Howl’ with his clothes off and Gregory Corso particularly liked the holiday fare on offer one year: ice-cream, doughnuts and Scotch.
And they kept coming back – in 1982 George’s daughter, Sylvia, spent her second Christmas on this earth with Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso, eating a supper of baking-powder biscuits and cheese soufflé.
George believed that books were a sanctuary for the mind. His bookshop became a sanctuary for body and soul. There is a library for anyone who wants to sit and read out of the cold or the sun. In George’s day, as many as twenty-four impoverished writers and readers were sleeping in the store as well.
Now George is dead. He made it to ninety-four and died in his tiny apartment over the shop. His daughter Sylvia (born when George was sixty-eight) runs the ever-expanding bookopolis with her partner, David Delennet. The bookstore has finally become a business (George refused a computer or a telephone, or even a cash register), though the spirit hasn’t changed. The store is no longer open on Christmas Day, but Sylvia and David cook a meal for staff and volunteers, and any lost writers fighting with their masterpieces.
Sylvia wrote to me:
One Christmas when the only thing left at the butcher’s was a piglet, I cooked it for twenty-five people. Its teeth came out and it looked terrifying. When I presented it to the table, there were gasps of shock from the display and then lots of giggles because half the table was Jewish and didn’t eat pork!!! Disaster.
Then there was another Christmas when Hong, the Chinese caretaker who helped with Dad, made dumplings – actually she called them DUMPINGS; this was when she first arrived and barely spoke a word of French or English. The Irish writer Ulick O’Connor was there, and as he was about to put a dumpling in his mouth he asked if there was any onion in them. Hong shook her head. He popped the dumpling in his mouth and said, ‘Good, because if there’s onion I die.’
I googled an onion, showed it to Hong and she suddenly changed her mind and said yes, yes, there’s definitely onion in there. Nightmare.
He was OK, though. Dad said he mustn’t be allergic to Chinese onions.
Soon after Christmas in 2007 I made my way to the bookshop in a bad state of loss – that summer my partner had left me abruptly; it felt like a death. That loss had triggered something deeper and scarier, but I was trying not to let anyone know.
I was coping by writing – in fact, the story in this collection ‘The Lion, the Unicorn and Me’ was written that December. I wrote it straight through one night, too unhappy to sleep. Its hero is a runty little donkey who gets a golden nose. I am the donkey.
Sylvia and David gave me the bookstore to roam in, their dog, Colette, to keep me company, a radiator to sit beside and all the meals I could eat. Later on, as things got worse for me, they bought me pyjamas and nursed me through a chest infection.
I had been to Shakespeare and Company many times before. I had met George, already ninety.
He didn’t look pleased to see me. In fact he threw a book at my head.
George: What’s she doing in my apartment? Who’s she?
Sylvia: She’s a writer, Daddy. Jeanette Winterson.
George looked pleased and he put down the next book he was preparing to launch at my person.
George: Did you show her the writers’ room? No? Goddam, do I have to do everything myself? She can stay as long as she likes – let me show you the writers’ room. You read Henry Miller? He. . .’
George loved writers. All writers. His home was our home.
To be made welcome. To be acknowledged. To be fed. To sleep soundly. To feel safe. To read. To put words on a page that others will read.
My mind was in free fall. Going mad is a risk. A journey not to be made if you can help it. Sometimes it is a journey that has to be made. But like all desperate journeys, there will be helpers along the way.
So at Christmas I raise a book and a glass to the star that led me to Shakespeare and Company and the refuge I found there, and the creative kindness of a way of life that has never reckoned money as the bottom line.
If you want to read the whole story of Shakespeare and Company, past, present and future, they have just published a book about it: Shakespeare and Company: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart (I wrote the foreword).
And here is the recipe for Hong’s Dumpings.
YOU NEED
1 lb (450 g) flour
1 lb (450 g) pork
1 lb (450 g) Chinese cabbage
Bunch of scallions
Fresh root ginger – not too much
Tablespoon of white wine
Salt and pepper
Water
Egg – if you like a richer dough. Not necessary.
METHOD
Hong says: Make the dough in the usual way, kneading the flour and water. Less water if you are adding an egg. The dough must be not too soft, not too hard. If it is too soft, add more flour. Too hard and dry, add more water. Making the dough takes about 15 minutes by hand, depending on the quantity you make.
Cut the dough in half or thirds, depending on the quantity you make, and roll each portion out thinly, but not too thin, or it will break when filled. Use a cup to cut out rounds like little full moons. Each of these full moons will be the dumpling parcels when filled.
For the filling, chop everything up separately, and small as a fingernail. This is important. Then mix all your filling ingredients together in a big bowl. Season to taste. And maybe you like more onion, maybe you like more ginger – up to you. As you experiment you will know.
Now fill your dough parcels with about a tablespoon of filling. You have to learn just how much filling so that the dumplings are plump, but not so fat that they come apart when boiled.
Today you will fold your full moons into half-moons for the filled dumplings. That is simple to do. If you like making dumplings you can experiment with different shapes and fancy folds later on.
My grandmother makes beautiful shaped and folded dumplings while she watches TV; her hands know what to do and she never even looks down once.
When the dough is filled, fold it into the easy half-moons and seal the edges all the way round by dipping your sealing fingers and thumb in a bowl of water. Seal must be tight. No gaps, or the filling will escape, and your pan water will be a messy soup of pork and cabbage bits.
While you are making the dumplings, bring to the boil a big pan of water, like for pasta.
Add the dumplings, stirring so that they don’t stick.
Now add another big cup of cold water – enough to take the water off the boil, and bring back to the boil.
Repeat this step.
You are boiling the dumplings 3 times.
After 6 or 7 minutes, take one out and slice open to see if the filling is cooked.
If you cook from frozen, it takes a bit longer. Remember to tip the dumplings straight into the hot water; do not defrost first.
You can use different meat. Doesn’t have to be pork. Or shrimp. You can add carrots to the cabbage. Cooking times vary a little depending on the filling.
In China people were poor when I was growing up. Dumplings were made with what you could get. We kept pigs, like many Chinese. Once you have the feel for dumplings, use for your filling whatever is in the kitchen, fresh at the market, or in the garden.
My friend JW made rabbit, carrot and leek dumplings and they were very good. She has a lot of rabbits in her garden. I think because she grows a lot of carrots. But it is well-known that rabbits do not eat the onion family so she grows her carrots behind an armed guard of leeks. Still, sometimes, a rabbit has to be taught a lesson and the dumplings were the result.
Dip your dumplings in any sauce you like – a simple, good quality soy sauce with added ginger or scallions is delicious.
