After much tribulation, Elfirida Phipps Oscar Blundell and friends gathered at a Christmas Eve picnic for the start of a happy future. The timing purposefully combines the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the winter solstice that is the beginning of the celestial new year; both bring tidings of good cheer.
As Pilcher orchestrates it, the picnic is a moveable feast. It begins indoors with burning Yule logs and glasses of wine and then shifts outdoors because it “seemed sacrilegious to be inside.” Eventually, they get to church, and Oscar Blundell plays Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy” on the organ. Elfrida, who loves Oscar, is delighted.
It’s a miraculous picnic because it requires no preparation; all the comfort food just appears. Presumably, we are expected to suppose someone is in the kitchen. Because Elfrida compliments Carrie and Sam for “the best picnic ever.”
In the lee of the house, the picnickers eat hot soup laced with sherry, ham, and mustard sandwiches made with “fresh rolls,” a bacon-and-egg quiche, chicken drumsticks, tomato salad, green apples, cheddar cheese, potato crisps, and chocolate. How the carafe keeps the coffee “boiling hot” is a mystery. But no one complains; Picher’s picnickers are a hardy lot.
See Rosamunde Pilcher. Winter Solstice: A Novel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000