Have you ever set a place for someone at your Christmas table who will never be noticed, despite them being there all the time? We have one such visitor at our table at Christmastime, every year. Her name is Miss C. Though she doesn’t take up much space at all, she sits in self-imposed silence amid all the hilarity which goes on around her, year after year. She has done so, in relative obscurity, for the past eleven years. No one has ever thought her worthy of a try despite her having so much to offer to the unsuspecting dinner guest, more so now than ever before, as she ages. Not to say that her family are discourteous in any way, because they’re not. Nevertheless despite the general busyness of catching up with everybody’s doings, every year, she is ignored. She expects nothing more from her family this year. When the table is cleared she knows she will just continue to rest in obscurity, contemplating her predicament on the Pantry shelf. You see, she is a bottle of Cranberry Sauce.
Miss C wistfully remembers the Cranberry bog she was plucked from. As a young, ripe berry she rubbed shoulders with other newly ripened Cranberries, all excitedly anticipating on whose table they would end up. In those boggy, halcyon days, she would never have imagined that her sharp and sweetened essence would remain pent up in her jar this long. She could never have imagined that she was not to feel the ambient temperature of someone’s plate or to adorn someone’s turkey. Even to drip unexpectedly down the front of someone’s white Christmas shirt would have meant that at least she’d be noticed. . Her seal has never been broken, the pop of her lid has never been heard - her sweet contents have never been sampled. She is still a Virgin Bottle of Cranberry Sauce.
Her label boasts that she is made from the Finest Whole European Wild Cranberries, and that she weighs 220 grams. With servings of approximately 40 grams, she could sustain six people, before drained of her contents. She recalls the pride she felt, as she lay amongst other rich delicacies in the straw of the Christmas Hamper basket. She learned that Macadamia Nuts and Turkish Delight are always selected first. Those sweet little Shortbread biscuits that turn into crumbs when the packet is opened, even those would be chosen before her potential sweetness might ever be sampled. As she lay there in ripe anticipation, one by one her companions are selected from their resting places around her but and she is left. Reasoning that someone has to be last - maybe the anticipation in her tasting might be increased. But when the bottle of “Mrs H.S. Ball’s Original Recipe Chutney” is snatched out of the straw bed before her when a South African visitor recognised her potential, her despair begins to set in. Its Mrs Ball’s bottle of spicy remnants which still rests in the fridge door to this day. She only makes an appearance when someone from South Africa again spies her slim curvy shape on the shelf and plucks her out to splash liberally upon her meat. Anybody knows and that stuff would melt rust! Still she sits.
As she reminisces about her aborted life, Miss Cranberry is taken back to her bottled beginnings when her ripe cranberries rested tantalisingly against each other supported in her rich sauce. She dreamed then of someone’s spoon plundering her delicious depths, as any young, fresh sauce would. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Instead, here she sits tucked away on the Pantry shelf - a thin covering of dust resting upon her lid. All she can do is wait to again be brought out this Christmas. Now her appearance is a family joke because who would dare open her now? She reminisces about all the Christmas dinners where conversations interplayed around her in the heat, as she sat beside the popular Salt and Pepper shakers. She always kept herself as far away from the wrapped toffees as she could. After-all a girl’s got to watch who she is associates with. Besides trashy, brightly adorned sweets are not her idea of sweetness.
This year Mum has put a ribbon around her middle. It gives her a more festive touch but she suspects that Mum might also feel a bit sorry for her. After all, her red ribbon might serve as a warning to guests, but she doesn’t want to think of that at the moment. Nevertheless if having a festive air to her bottle means that this will help her complete her duty of sitting on the table ignored and never used then at least she will feel like one of the party. She hopes in vain that the ribbon will obscure her Use-By date – no one deserves to have that displayed.
In recent times she has nurtured a hope of someone accidentally knocking her off the self but this too is dashed because the ribbon will cause her to stand out now. If not for it, she might have managed somehow to snag her ribbon against Dad’s watch perhaps. Without hesitation, she would have cast herself against the unrelenting tiled floor, splashing her sticky, pungent contents on everything stored on the lower shelves of the Pantry. There sit a dusty vegetable steamer, the food processor and an annually used mixer awaiting the excitement of the Christmas season. Even they are plucked out more than once a year, and they’re machines, not products, she silently screams.
On that day after she has achieved her final dream and made it into Cranberry Heaven where all unused and unappreciated hamper condiments go, then and only then will a forensic examination of the Pantry be undertaken. An obtuse red splash will be excitedly examined. It will then be discovered that cranberry juice and not blood died in obscurity there. After all, everyone knows that the Butler did it with the Knife in the Pantry, but no one knew that it was the Cranberry Sauce that added a bit of spice to the mix.
Miss C wistfully remembers the Cranberry bog she was plucked from. As a young, ripe berry she rubbed shoulders with other newly ripened Cranberries, all excitedly anticipating on whose table they would end up. In those boggy, halcyon days, she would never have imagined that her sharp and sweetened essence would remain pent up in her jar this long. She could never have imagined that she was not to feel the ambient temperature of someone’s plate or to adorn someone’s turkey. Even to drip unexpectedly down the front of someone’s white Christmas shirt would have meant that at least she’d be noticed. . Her seal has never been broken, the pop of her lid has never been heard - her sweet contents have never been sampled. She is still a Virgin Bottle of Cranberry Sauce.
Her label boasts that she is made from the Finest Whole European Wild Cranberries, and that she weighs 220 grams. With servings of approximately 40 grams, she could sustain six people, before drained of her contents. She recalls the pride she felt, as she lay amongst other rich delicacies in the straw of the Christmas Hamper basket. She learned that Macadamia Nuts and Turkish Delight are always selected first. Those sweet little Shortbread biscuits that turn into crumbs when the packet is opened, even those would be chosen before her potential sweetness might ever be sampled. As she lay there in ripe anticipation, one by one her companions are selected from their resting places around her but and she is left. Reasoning that someone has to be last - maybe the anticipation in her tasting might be increased. But when the bottle of “Mrs H.S. Ball’s Original Recipe Chutney” is snatched out of the straw bed before her when a South African visitor recognised her potential, her despair begins to set in. Its Mrs Ball’s bottle of spicy remnants which still rests in the fridge door to this day. She only makes an appearance when someone from South Africa again spies her slim curvy shape on the shelf and plucks her out to splash liberally upon her meat. Anybody knows and that stuff would melt rust! Still she sits.
As she reminisces about her aborted life, Miss Cranberry is taken back to her bottled beginnings when her ripe cranberries rested tantalisingly against each other supported in her rich sauce. She dreamed then of someone’s spoon plundering her delicious depths, as any young, fresh sauce would. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Instead, here she sits tucked away on the Pantry shelf - a thin covering of dust resting upon her lid. All she can do is wait to again be brought out this Christmas. Now her appearance is a family joke because who would dare open her now? She reminisces about all the Christmas dinners where conversations interplayed around her in the heat, as she sat beside the popular Salt and Pepper shakers. She always kept herself as far away from the wrapped toffees as she could. After-all a girl’s got to watch who she is associates with. Besides trashy, brightly adorned sweets are not her idea of sweetness.
This year Mum has put a ribbon around her middle. It gives her a more festive touch but she suspects that Mum might also feel a bit sorry for her. After all, her red ribbon might serve as a warning to guests, but she doesn’t want to think of that at the moment. Nevertheless if having a festive air to her bottle means that this will help her complete her duty of sitting on the table ignored and never used then at least she will feel like one of the party. She hopes in vain that the ribbon will obscure her Use-By date – no one deserves to have that displayed.
In recent times she has nurtured a hope of someone accidentally knocking her off the self but this too is dashed because the ribbon will cause her to stand out now. If not for it, she might have managed somehow to snag her ribbon against Dad’s watch perhaps. Without hesitation, she would have cast herself against the unrelenting tiled floor, splashing her sticky, pungent contents on everything stored on the lower shelves of the Pantry. There sit a dusty vegetable steamer, the food processor and an annually used mixer awaiting the excitement of the Christmas season. Even they are plucked out more than once a year, and they’re machines, not products, she silently screams.
On that day after she has achieved her final dream and made it into Cranberry Heaven where all unused and unappreciated hamper condiments go, then and only then will a forensic examination of the Pantry be undertaken. An obtuse red splash will be excitedly examined. It will then be discovered that cranberry juice and not blood died in obscurity there. After all, everyone knows that the Butler did it with the Knife in the Pantry, but no one knew that it was the Cranberry Sauce that added a bit of spice to the mix.