by Helen Heath OAM, executive officer of the Interfaith Network of the City of Greater Dandenong
I know people who place an empty chair at the dinner table to remind them of family and friends who are no longer present with them.
My family began placing an extra bonbon in the middle of the Christmas table in memory of ‘absent friends’.
This bonbon is never pulled and sits there for the meal. For those who do not know, Christmas bon bons, also known as crackers, are usually cardboard tubes twisted at both ends and wrapped in colourful paper.
They resemble oversized lollies wrapped up and often contain paper crown hats, corny jokes or a saying, a small gift, and a note.
A person pulls on each end of the bonbon and when it breaks, a small banger goes off inside the cracker, making a crackling ‘pop’ sound.
For some people these are happy additions to the table providing fun for the two people who tug on the bonbon.
They were first made in about 1845-1850 by a London sweet maker called Tom Smith. He had seen the French ‘bonbon’ sweets (almonds wrapped in pretty paper) on a visit to Paris in 1840.
He came back to London and tried selling sweets like that in England, but he also included a small motto or riddle in with the sweet.
While for some members of my family bon bons are pointless, for others like my sister who lives with an intellectual disability, they are a great source of joy because she invariably knows the corny joke.
If she does not know the joke, for the moment when she has read out the joke, she knows she has power because she knows and holds the answer in her hands!!
While bonbons are a long and simple tradition, they bring hope in the moment they are used: the anticipation (for some) of what might be contained in them; for others the hope that they will ‘pop’ just right and break apart revealing all – and for others a moment of laughter and smiling as you share expectations in the pulling of the bonbon.
Dr Seuss once said: “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”.
If the dimness of the last two or so years has revealed anything, it is the joy of remembering special and unique moments.
We all have some special and unique moments that provide, over time, a repertoire for us to recall and claim the warmth of those moments when all seems cold, black, and dark.
Omar Khayyam notes: “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life”.
Hoping you have a ‘cracker’ of a day.
Message of Hope is a regular column featuring the Internet Network of Greater Dandenong. For details about the Interfaith Network, contact executive@interfaithnetwork.org.au or 8774 7662.
