Nuts in December

One of the great mysteries of Christmas, as far as I'm concerned, is the obsession with nuts.  Way back, in the far off says of the 1970s, I recall that everybody, every Christmas, had nuts in a bowl.  It was the only time of year that anybody would have the bloody things in the house and actually try to eat them.  When I say nuts, I don't mean peanuts or cashew nuts bought in neat packages from the supermarket, (and there was only one variety of peanuts - ready salted - in those days).  Oh no.  These were Brazil nuts, hazel nuts and walnuts - which were bought in plastic net bags from the supermarket.  As I mentioned before, once in the house, they were transferred to a bowl, where people would take them whilst watching Christmas TV and eat them,  Except that before they could eat them, they had to crack the bloody things open.  Which required the use of the set of cheap nutcrackers every home seemed to be equipped with in those days. 

Inevitably, of course, the nutcrackers wouldn't be up to the job - indeed, sometimes they would break, rather than the nutshell - and people would have to find alternative means of cracking their nuts.  Whilst hammers and pliers were popular alternatives other, less conventional, means were also employed.  One of my brothers once put a walnut under the leg of a chair, then jumped on the chair, in order to crack the nut.  Of course, the chair broke and the walnut remained intact.  Anyway, I've never got to the bottom of the business of eating nuts at Christmas.  Perhaps it had something to do with the war and rationing.  Whatever the reason, the tradition seems to have died out, along with buying a box pressed dates for the festive season, (those date boxes made great toy boats).  I had a look in the supermarket earlier and could find no trace of any bags of mixed nuts, let alone boxes of pressed dates.  Another Christmas tradition gone...