Plum Pudding and Lebkuchen

I just heard a couple of tidbits that I found interesting on a Food Channel show called : "The Secret Life Of... Christmas foods.

My family has always followed some of the English Christmas traditions that my mother remembered from her childhood. One of those is the traditional desert of Plum Pudding with a silver coin in it. The year we were in England when I was 9 (and I think a few years after that) we had a silver sixpence. Most other years we have had a dime, the American coin that is most similar to that.

In this show they mentioned that it is traditional to have not only a coin, but also a button, a ring and a thimble. The person who found the coin would have wealth, the person who found the ring would get married, the man who found the button would remain a bachelor, the woman who found the thimble would be a spinster.

They also talked about German lebkuchen, ginger cookies made with honey and pressed into wooden molds that have been made since at least the 13th century. Most of them have christian themes but some of them have pagan symbols. I was curious to see which pagan symbols they have but could not find any images on the web that looked likely.

collegewikis.com?

Hmm,

Just got an email/spam from collegewikis.com claiming to have a wiki for UCSC which would be cool. But, you have to create an account and log in to see any of their content. This just seems to me to be directly opposite to the wiki concept of open information. So I didn't log in. But I do think it would be good for someone to create a open UCSC wiki.

LolBananaSlug

Wen i wuz a UCSC stewdint a cow once got a bukkit stuk on his foot an wokked around famly howsing at 3am...




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