Friday the 13th . . . .

 . . . . comes on a Sunday this month.

So remember:  don't break any ladders or walk under any black cats.   And whatever you do, don't be superstitious.   It's bad luck to be superstitious.

Next Sunday would have been Stir-Up Sunday if Bishop Bugnini and his merry band of elves hadn't moved the feast of Christ the King from its proper place and pushed the good old Sunday collect off it's Sunday perch.  So you'll get no timely liturgical reminder to start your Christmas puddings as in days of yore.  This blog post will have to do.  Although, The Inn does have the advantage of being a week early so you'll have time to gather all the requisite ingredients.

When I was a boy we used to have Christmas pudding every other year.  There was a proper pudding bowl and a detailed recipe that went with it and only it.  (From my great grandmother, I think.  Alas,  the younger me was more interested in eating the pudding than in recording its history.)  One  year my mother would make the pudding and then mail the bowl back to my aunt in New York who would make the pudding that year for the east coast contingent.  Then she would  mail it back here for the next year.  Somewhere along the line the bowl went missing.  Nothing else like it could be found.   (No google searches in those days.)   The Recipe never quite worked right with anything else.   Thereafter, we made do with store-boughten.  (Yes, it is too a word.  An old one but a good 'un.)

I have been told by people who claimed to know that that story is preposterous.  No pudding could depend upon a particular bowl like that.  To which I respond:  Beats me.  Maybe.  But that's the family story and I'm sticking with it.