#JOM: Christmas comes to the highlands

THERE'S something wonderfully improbable about Christmas in Cameron Highlands, Pahang.

While much of the country is still wrapped in tropical heat in November, the mountains can be shrouded in mist, the air cool enough for a cardigan and the evenings made for hot tea, crackling fires and the sound of Christmas carols drifting through old rooms.

At Cameron Highlands Resort overlooking the golf course in Tanah Rata, Christmas arrives early, with the resort's Christmas Tree Lighting Weekend taking place from Nov 20 to 22.

With its old-world English character and highland setting, the resort is perhaps an unlikely place to conjure up Tudor England and an English Christmas.

Yet the two come together rather beautifully over a small pastry with a surprisingly grand history.

The Maids of Honour tart — delicate pastry wrapped around a sweet, curd-based filling — has been associated with Richmond, near London, for centuries.

Its name is said to have originated at the royal court of Henry VIII, with one enduring tale recounting how the king discovered Anne Boleyn and her fellow maids of honour enjoying the little tarts.

The story is irresistible, although it should be treated as legend rather than documented Tudor history.

Anne did serve in the household of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, before her own extraordinary rise to become queen.

But there's no firm historical evidence that she invented the tart or that Henry VIII locked its recipe away in an iron box, as the popular story goes.

What is better documented is the tart's long association with the town of Richmond and the Newens family, whose baking tradition dates back generations.

TASTE OF HISTORY

It was this history that drew Cameron Highlands Resort's baker, Chef Nathan, to London.

Keen to understand the pastry beyond the romantic stories surrounding it, he travelled to Newens, the historic bakery near Kew Gardens associated with the original Maids of Honour, to learn how the tart is made.

The result will be served during English Afternoon Tea at the resort's Jim Thompson Tea Room over the Christmas weekend, alongside scones, clotted cream, savouries and desserts.

There's something fitting about encountering this very English confection here in the cool mountains of Pahang.

Cameron Highlands itself owes much of its enduring character to the British colonial era.

Surveyed by British explorer William Cameron in 1885, the plateau was later developed as a hill station, its cooler climate attracting plantations, retreats and eventually the tea estates and hotels that helped shape the highlands' identity.

Today, its winding roads, moss-covered forests, tea plantations and pockets of colonial architecture continue to give it an atmosphere quite unlike the rest of the country. And by November, that atmosphere lends itself naturally to Christmas.

YULETIDE CHARM

The season reaches its most anticipated moment as Saturday evening settles over the highlands, with the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony taking place by the resort's front porch.

Candles will glow and carols will fill the cool air. Then, with the flick of a switch, the tree will come alive, its thousands of lights casting a warm golden glow against the darkness as voices rise in song.

There's no snow, of course. This is Malaysia.

Yet for those few moments, standing in the crisp highland air beneath the lights, it's easy to understand why Christmas has always been as much about atmosphere as geography.

Perhaps that's the charm of bringing the tradition here.

The Maids of Honour tart carries echoes of Richmond and a Tudor court; the afternoon tea recalls another era; the resort's fireplaces and old-world interiors provide their own sense of nostalgia; and outside, Cameron Highlands offers something the tropics rarely can — an evening that actually feels cold enough for Christmas.

The weekend's theme of Trails, Tales and Tradition is therefore more than a festive tagline.

There are trails through the misty landscape, tales shared over tea and dinner, and traditions — some centuries old, some much newer — given another life.

And somewhere between the first cup of tea and the final Christmas carol, a little piece of old England finds itself quite at home in the hills of Pahang.