The old Mother Goose nursery rhyme says:
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating his Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, “What a good boy am I!”
The lyrics of the poem seem a bit ridiculous, don’t they? What exactly was being talked about? What is a “Christmas pie?” There’s much about it that we would find offensive.
For starters, it is a classic 14th c. English dessert and like many of their recipes, it is loaded with alcohol, typically brandy or sherry. The ingredients are soaked in the alcohol for a time before being combined into the recipe. Once it is made, alcohol is poured over it and lit, making it a flambe.
Second, after it is made, it’s usually aged for a month before being consumed, allegedly making all the flavors coalesce. The ingredients are cooked and then the mixture is covered and stored in a cool, dark place. Evidently, the alcohol keeps mold from forming!
Third, it was customary to hide some sort of trinket or coin in the dessert. Whoever found it while eating was sure to be blessed throughout the year – provided they didn’t choke on it or break a tooth.
Fourth, it wasn’t a “pie.” It was plum pudding which, in its final state, is more cake than a pudding.
Finally, plum pudding isn’t normally made with plums. Instead, raisins, currants, prunes, diced apples, and dried apricots are used.
I imagine that nothing about this sounds appealing. What made me think about this is the fact that today is National Plum Pudding Day. Here we are, 50 days past Christmas, and it’s a celebration of the original Christmas Pie that has nothing to do with Christmas, pie, pudding, or plums.
It promises something but is empty on the delivery.
Jude is a little book of warning near the end of the Bible. It only takes Jude 25 verses to lay out a serious warning. In Jude 1:3-4, he writes, “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. (4) For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In the next few verses, Jude describes these people who have crept into the church and compares them to some of the most wicked individuals and situations of the Old Testament. Then, he writes in Jude 1:12-13, “These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; (13) Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
These people have crept into the church, they are sitting at the “feasts of charity” which preceded the observance of the Lord’s Table, and their presence and actions promised that they were there for the good of the church as a whole. But they were empty and devoid of such compassion and tenderness.
The Believer’s Bible Commentary writes, “They are spots (blemishes) in the love feasts which were held by the early Christians in connection with the Lord’s Supper. They fear neither God nor man, and care for themselves rather than for the flock. They lure others to besmirch the faith.” David Guzik writes in the Enduring Word Commentary, “Clouds without water are good for nothing. They bring no life-giving rain and they only block out the sun. They exist just for themselves. The certain men were like these clouds.
“Once while driving by a factory, my daughter Aan-Sofie looked at the billows of white smoke coming from the smoke stacks. She said, “That’s where they make clouds!” These certain men were like those empty clouds – good for nothing, carried by the winds, floating on the breeze from one fad to another.”
These were the plum pudding of people!
