Holiday food traditions

[rthstewart]

Americans celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday -- a holiday commemorated by a few people of the home (often but not always women) laboring long into the night before and that day struggling to bring to the table a collection of dishes all made at the last minute supposedly harkening back to the first feast in 1621 between the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag tribe. 

In yesterday's post, and in preparation for writing Chapter 13 of AW, Christmas in 1942, adaese and wellinghall have been providing me with fabulous information (and thanks again!).  I mentioned that the Christmas traditions an American family follows may depend in part on their ethnic background -- I know Italian families who always have fish on Christmas Eve and German families who always eat spaetzle and open presents on Christmas Eve.  Food traditions also vary widely throughout the U.S. by region but I don't know anyone who puts a traditional English pudding on the Christmas table.  min023 wanted to know what food traditions Americans have at their holiday if not pudding.   harmony_lover joined in with an observation about Christmas cookies.

And I thought, well, gosh this sounds like fun.  F-list you all come from all over.  What food traditions do you have at Thanksgiving, Christmas or other holidays like New Year's?

Growing up our family holiday gathering food was very hodgepodge and memorable in its eccentricity.  The sweet potato casserole is the stuff of legend -- canned yams/sweet potatoes, marshmallows, orange, brown sugar, and rum, which my mother ignited 3 successive times in the oven before realizing that one could not substitute an equivalent amount of rum  extract for 50 mL -- 1/4 cup rum. 

There was a holiday buffet of turkey or ham, orange cold molded jell-o salad with whipped cream, fruit, and coconut, mashed potatoes, onions in cream sauce, broccoli, and the Pièce de résistance, enchiladas, which have an interesting history.  That part of the family comes from the American Midwest and any meal was not complete without hot dish -- which I learned of when I moved to the great heartland.  When the family moved to the West Coast where we all lived, they brought hot dish with them which became enchiladas -- a more appropriate "hot dish" for California. 

When I moved to the Midwest I learned that you cannot attend any event in the state of Minnesota at which food is served and not encounter wild rice hot dish and its counterpart green bean casserole with canned cream of mushroom soup and Durkee fried onion ring topping.   "Creama" is serious business in Minnesota -- Campbell's cream of mushroom, cream of broccoli, and cream of chicken soup are essential ingredients and on every shopping list.

Desserts are, as harmony_lover indicated, frequently Christmas cookies which are one of the few places where you will see the dried fruit of a pudding.  I've also seen and eaten chocolate cake, cherry pie, Bûche de Noël, English trifle, pannetone, and gingerbread, again reflecting both  American efforts to tie to a cultural background (real or imagined), and what's available at the bakery or Trader Joe's.  Minnesota cookies were "pan of bars" -- that is, cookies baked in a pan and cut.

In truth, I don't make any of this of food, but it is what I grew up with.  Anyone else want to share?  And should you know anything of Christmas in 1942, I'll take that too! 

Comments

[jenett]

My parents are British (well, my father was English, and my mother was Austrian but grew up in Northern Ireland and Wales.) So, Thanksgiving - not a family thing.

Christmas was, when I was growing up, full out English - we'd have goose, roast potatoes, usually roast carrots and some other vegetable. And then Christmas pudding. (Which as a child, I hated, and now like a lot.) And of course crackers. (By which I mean the paper things that you open with a pop, and that have a paper hat, a joke, and a trinket.)

Friends (the husband's British) from when I lived in Minnesota would throw a solstice party every year, usually with Indian food, lots of different cookies, and then Christmas pudding, which always made me happy.

These days, since my religious celebration is Solstice, and my family's spread out, we've been tending not to do family gathering. (Also, my brother and his family are vegetarian, which does rather leave out the goose part...)

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Where would you get a Christmas pudding in the STates? Did they make it from scratch or buy it somewhere? Locally, now, I know of two places I might go to buy a pudding, but these are relatively recent developments. There's this great store in our area that has the most amazing international section. It's built long and narrow and there are wire shelves and they are stocked with things from all over the world, organized by country. If you want your proper Cuban food, your Turkish, or your Russian, you go there, and I know that was where I could always get good tea and the Cadbury Roses assortment.

Solstice sounds like a LOVELY celebration, especially with Indian food. Yum.

[muscatlove.livejournal.com]

My family is combined English and Italian on my mom's side, so for Thanksgiving they do a turkey, mashed potatoes, rutabega, sweet potato casserole, roasted carrots and green beans, homemade cappaletti pasta (an Italian pasta that is shaped like little old fashioned hats, stuffed with chicken/veal/pork and spiced with nutmeg), various stuffings, and then a wide variety of pies and occasionally a ham or fruit jello added to the mix. My husband's family is Slovak and from the same town, and they do similar dishes but specialize in a stuffing mixed with organ meats, no pasta, and then a variety of recently imported dishes (Caesar salad, french fries, chicken strips) to please the pickiest kids (and kids at heart).

For Christmas, my father's family and my husband's do the Polish/Slovak Catholic tradition of eating no meat, so his family does lots of crabcakes, spaghetti in clam sauce, shrimp, fried whitefish, pickled herring, etc. plus mushroom & sauerkraut soup and a variety of starches (they seem to hate vegetables). My family does a Manhattan clam chowder, shrimp, various starches and veggies, some kind of white fish, and before dinner we do the tradition of taking the church wafers and breaking them for everyone, and from oldest to youngest we go around the table saying a wish or prayer for the new year and dip the wafer in honey and eat it. My mom's family does Christmas day, where they just have caterers do a variety of Italian dishes as well as sushi (a recent addition) and then we all drink and play board games all night.

We did have an exciting dinner at my husband's family dinner one year where a cousin dared to give her 8-year-old daughter (who had just recovered from the flu and was being whiny) a salami sandwich instead, as the kids hate all the seafood and fish, which lead to a near fistfight among the old Slovak ladies who were debating whether or not a kid could eat meat on Christmas eve in the Catholic church and whether her mother had committed some kind of wacky sin for making the sandwich for her knowingly. I just sat there amazed that anyone cared.

They all do midnight mass on Christmas eve, and then open gifts in the morning, although the kids open gifts from non-immediate family members at the dinner where everyone is together in my husband's family.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Oh those whacky Eastern Europeans and the lack of vegetables. Well, there are potatoes. And cabbage. Lots of potatoes and cabbage. Did you have the Romanian equivalent of Mămăligă? It's like polenta? I ate a lot of it in Romania when I was there. Certainly when they were in season the tomatoes were divine.

I knew of the Italian (7?) fishes, but did not know that it was in the Polish and Slovak and more broadly Catholic tradition as well. My husband's family is Irish and German Catholic and Minnesotan, so there's lots of pork. I swear even the desserts are flavored with pork, which is an issue for the Muslims in the family!!!

In Minnesota I learned about the Scandinavian tradition of lutefisk, which is holiday white fish, dried and soaked in lye or something and then boiled.

[(Anonymous)]

I’m really not surprised with your family’s reaction. I don’t know much about Slovak Christmas traditions, but they are clearly quite similar to Polish (for centuries border there wasn’t well settled).
Catholic Church abolished restriction regarding eating meat during Christmas Eve in 1966. Polish primate immediately wrote a letter to Pope to ask him to ratify resolution of the Polish Episcopal Conference which upholds this restriction in Poland. Everybody was happy till 2003, when angry panic started after “information” appeared that PEC in its newest letter to the people abolished that restriction. For some time it was the main topic in the country, with very few voices saying “abolishing restriction doesn’t mean that we have to eat meat, so we may just not eat it anyway” – and usually that were the voices of non-Catholics. More often you could hear some variant of “who do these bishops think they are?” and “What do they know, these bishops”. But that was all before the letter was published. When people could finally read it, they found out that it only puts restriction about eating meat during Christmas Eve in different place then restrictions regarding Lent and Great Friday – as it’s not the part of canon law, but PEC’s recommendation. What doesn’t change a fact that many people for a long time had a grudge against Polish bishops.
As to the non-Catholics taking part in that discussion – not eating meat on Christmas Eve is treated more as Polish than Catholic tradition and all Christians in Poland maintain it, although formally they have no reason for that. Just like many atheists and agnostics celebrate Christmas Eve.
Krystyna

[harmony-lover.livejournal.com]

Thinking about this has made me realize some interesting things. Christmas was mostly with my mother's side of the family, which is both German and Scotch-Irish. So we went to church (Methodist) on Christmas Eve, then would come home and, in the German tradition, open the vast majority of our present in a lovely gift-giving orgy.

Dinner, which was before service, usually consisted of roast beef or turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans (though not the mushroom soup/onion variety; I encountered those often in Michigan and was not a fan), sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, and who knows what else. There were usually two pots of gravy, as well - one for those who ate giblets, and one for those who did not.

Then, the aforementioned (in my other post) varieties of pie, cookies, and chocolate. So very good.

My own religion really is much more pagan now, so we follow the Yule tradition of Christmas, but we are still big on wonderful meals with the same traditional foods, and Christmas trees, and lots of presents. I miss the gift-giving orgy on Christmas day; my wife and mother-in-law are very firm about opening gifts on Christmas morning. :) Mulled cider has become a big part of our celebrations, as well as wood fires. Mixing traditions is so nice; you get the best of all worlds that way.

[harmony-lover.livejournal.com]

Your comment about trifle was interesting, rth - my mother made an amazing fruit and vanilla pudding trifle, but it usually appeared for Easter rather than Christmas.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

How is the Yule tradition different from Christmas? Christmas is such a fun hodgepodge of usurped pagan traditions anyway, plus you tack on Saint Francis of Assisi's contributions to the ideas of the creche and manger and the farm animals all lying down together.

And the Methodists would have the big meal on Christmas Eve and then go to church and then open presents? And the meal is not fish. Such variety of practices and you are right, the mixing of traditions is a great way to involve new generations and new members of the families.

[snitchnipped.livejournal.com]

OK, I LOVE this post, Rth!

The midwest staple of "Green Bean & French Onion Casserole of Happiness" (as they call it on MST3K, straight out of Minnesota) is an absolute must. But that's a rather new casserole, is it not? I shy away from the Campbell's mushroom soup 'cause all I taste is the MSG, but whoowee does Trader Joe's offer a good alternative...

My entire family, save for myself, is from the Wisconsin area and is primarily German. Backing up from Christmas, we have St. Nicholas Day which I always grew up celebrating -- we'd hang our stockings on the decorated mantle (first decorations up!) on 12/5 and wake up the next morning to discover them filled with nuts, and orange, a can of juice, small chocolates, powdered donuts and a small present. It wasn't until a few years ago that I learned that the can of juice and powdered donuts only became a tradition because of the one year Mom and Dad forgot at the last minute and had to run to the gas station to find fillers... But anyway, it was a tradition my mother grew up with, coming from a solid German household. She would get peanuts, some candy, an orange or an apple, and a small toy. All that they each would not have to share, which was a big deal to a family of 6 kids!

Ah, the beauty of skype... I was able to catch my mother and ask her details on all of these things.

First thing's first, the Christmas tree came with Santa and was a surprise to see Christmas morning. Mass first, then presents. To eat it was goose or duck at first, then they moved on to turkey or ham. There were no sweet potatoes, but peas and cole slaw. Cole slaw is still very much the tradition in my family... kinda a big deal, even for Thanksgiving, which most other people outside of WI thinks is crazy. Whatever, people are missing out. And they always had homemade bread.

Dessert would be pumpkin pie (and candy, apparently, which was a special treat) for that big meal when family would come over, but it wouldn't just stop there. These days, it's just appalling to see people lugging out their used Christmas trees on the 26th and people read to move on for the holiday. For my mom's German Catholic side of the family, the holiday continued for the next several days (the 12 Days of Christmas has been LOST in modern times) with different family visiting each other on different days.

Growing up, we would have a normal holiday meal, but with Cornish Hens 'cause that was just a neat thing to do. No pies, though. It's all about homemade Christmas Cookies and candies. One year my mom and I made about 30 different kinds. Nowadays, it's usually just 6, but that's the only dessert that we have, outside whatever candy we buy. We've since done away with the big meal, but still keep to our breakfast -- egg casserole, a kuchen (raspberry jam and cream cheese coffee cake, essentially) and sparkling juice. For the rest of the day, we just do snacks of cheese, crackers, dips, veggie tray, etc. Much safer on the waistlines!

Long post is long. And now I'm hungry.

[snitchnipped.livejournal.com]

Oh, on a somewhat related note... I came across this video awhile back when researching the choir at King's College for Dichotomy (and, uh, the sequel to the sequel).

It's 1941 and probably isn't very helpful to you, but it's a great thing to watch regardless:

http://youtu.be/aGK5EsGzKIg

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

My husband's family is from Minnesota and we've got family who married into a big Polish family from Milwaukee so we know all about putting shoes out and getting candy the next day. Grandma still sends packages with candied orange slices.

Oh, cole slaw... what KIND? Is it the mayonnaise type? or the vinegary type? though... I may be getting confused. For YEARS my sister in law, a TERRIBLE COOK, always insisted on bringing the German potato salad to everything, bacon, bacon grease, and cider vinegar.

I have no idea what the origins are of the green bean casserole and its cousin the wild rice hot dish. I know that the Minnesota cookbook I got as a wedding gift over 20 years ago has pages and pages of variations on those recipes and I'd never heard before of the significance of the 79 cent can of Cream of Mushroom soup until I moved to the Midwest. (I've not even mentioned the significance of "dollar bun" sandwiches that are served at every important milestone in a person's life -- the same menus of hot dish, dollar buns, green bean casserole, and pans of bars will be at y our birth and baptism, first Communion, confirmation, graduations, wedding showers, wedding, all those events for you children, and finally your wake and funeral lunch in the church basement).

And YES, Christmas is supposed to continue to Epiphany... which come to think of it, I'm lectoring at this year.

[elouise82.livejournal.com]

We tended to stay away from traditional foods in our family - both my parents grew up in families that insisted all the food be the same for every holiday, every year, and they both hated the stress involved. So our traditions built around family time instead of food. We don't always have turkey on Thanksgiving; while most people here in the Frozen Northeast of the US have ham on Christmas, we tend to have soups and appetizers, so people can drop by at any time to spend an hour or two playing games and watching movies, and be able to eat a snack while here.

We do have a couple of food traditions - one that is unique to our family is my dad making his special breakfast of sausage and scrambled eggs on the holiday morning. One other, and this is more than just us, is apple pie with sharp cheddar cheese. We always thought this was a fairly common habit - cheese with pie - until people started looking at my sister and me like we were crazy for it when we grew up and moved away from home. So it's either a farming family thing, or a Northern NY/New England thing. Whether you have cheese with it or not, though, apple pie is a must for our family!

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

My husband's grandfather used to say: "Apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze." He ALWAYS had a slice of cheddar with his pie. That's too bad that food because stressful but there are always articles about that. Certainly my mother would panic over any roux based sauces -- she ALWAYS got stuck making the creamed onions and gravy and it really stressed her out. I learned that all from Joy of Cooking, THANK YOU. And I'm glad the squash dish was yummy -- I made a butternut puree that was just WONDERFUL from pioneer woman.

[edenfalling]

My family background is mixed northern European -- German, Polish, Danish, and English. They all moved to the Midwest when they came to America; my sister and I are the first generation born elsewhere. So of course we make green bean casserole. No holiday meal really counts without it. :-)

Christmas main courses are whatever the people involved in the dinner feel like eating that year -- turkey, ham, steak, fish, whatever. My mom's family opened gifts on Xmas Day and my Dad's on Xmas Eve, so my nuclear family compromises by having everyone open ONE gift on Xmas Eve after the church service and the drive-around-and-look-at-lights business, and the rest we open on Xmas morning. The tree is purchased, put up, and decorated in the first or second week of December; it is a real tree. Gifts appear under it as they are purchased and wrapped, except for ones that contain food and might attract the dog; those sit on the mantel until Xmas itself. Stockings are hung on the mantel when the tree goes up. And yes, my mom still hangs stockings for me and Vicky, even though we are grown women; she uses them to give us things like travel toothpaste and stamps, which she can't justify as actual wrapped presents. *wry*

Vicky is very invested in baking Xmas cookies, and will make pretty much everything off a standard list: my great-grandma's oatmeal cookies, little fat sugar cookies with a Hershey's kiss pressed into the center, snickerdoodles, good cookies (that's honestly what they're called; you can see why I have never been able to Google the recipe), chocolate chip cookies, etc.

Thanksgiving dinner is more codified than Xmas dinner. There is turkey; the turkey is cooked with stuffing inside and the rest of the stuffing cooks on the stovetop. Gravy and two kinds of cranberry sauce -- the one with actual berries, and the canned and processed cylinder of almost jelly-like consistency -- are available to put on the turkey. There is green bean casserole. There is a potato dish, generally a scalloped potato and cheese casserole of some sort but occasionally baked potatoes by way of variety. There is some dish involving sweet potatos, which varies in form from year to year; this year it was a casserole that almost resembled a whipped sweet potato pudding, blecch. We used to always have carrot-raisin-apple salad, but that's unworkable now because I am allergic to two of the ingredients, so we have switched to a random vegetable dish (often peas with either pearl onions or mushrooms) and a green salad instead. Dessert is pumpkin pie and some other pie -- pecan when I was a child, but these days more often chocolate mousse.

Since Vicky and I have been old enough to legally drink alcohol, our family has adopted an informal wine tasting tradition on Thanksgiving -- we buy three bottles of a similar type of wine from three different sources (often local Finger Lakes wineries, since my parents tend to do wine tours when they visit me) and do a blind comparison. This is the concluding section of the general pre-meal happy hour, which consists of assorted fancy crackers, cheeses & spreads, sometimes veggies & dip, and small treats like olives and pickled mushrooms. (That kind of happy hour is a tradition that traces to my dad's father and stepmother; I have no idea where they picked it up.)

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

So, WHAT is a "good cookie?" Can you describe it? With the Hershey Kiss cookies, I make them with peanut butter in a spritz and then pipe in a dollop of chocolate. YUM. And why do you have the canned cranberry sauce? With the lines on the side and it sits on the plate jiggling? is that a favorite of someone, the homemade variety notwithstanding? Since I was cooking for 16 this year, I made cranberry sauce for the first time in a long time. Added too much lemon then had to sweeten it up with more brown sugar. Oops.

Oh, carrot, raisin, salad. I know those!!

The wine tasting sounds like a really nice tradition. We really enjoy having a sparkling pinot noir with the appetizers.

[min023.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating. Thanksgiving isn't celebrated Down Under, and Christmas is very much dependent on your family's ethnic/cultural origins (Australia is very much a multi-cultural, polyglot society). So my families are of English/Scots/Irish descent, and until the last generation or two, have been rural farming families to boot. So our traditional is that we have Christmas dinner in the middle of Christmas Day after church.

Until a few years ago, the tradition was the full hot dinner: baked ham, roasted pork and chicken or turkey, along with baked vegetables, to be followed with hot pudding and custard. And yes, this is right in the middle of the Australian summer, when days are normally around 30-35C (that's 86-95F).

In recent years, we've shifted to a meal based around fancy salads and cold roasted meats and ham. Dessert still features hot pudding for those who want it, but we also do an ice cream pudding, filled with candied fruits and nuts. We also tend to a lot of Christmas baking: shortbreads, rum balls, fruit mince pies and lots of special things that we don't tend to do at any other time of year. (I should also says that there tends to be an awful lot of leftovers at this time of year, too).

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

The idea of doing all that cooking when it is that hot is just ... wow. Even a lot of baking would be hard because it all gets so hot. So is the Christmas pudding served hot? I knew it might be flaming, but do you warm it up? Even your ice cream pudding is filled with candied fruit!

I know that my original big old fat Joy of Cooking had a lot of Christmas cookie recipes with dried fruit and that I never made those recipes. They were very old world and some of them were aged and they weren't to my taste, even when I started baking Christmas cookies 40 years ago. This ingredient might be a tradition in some American homes but it's never been mine -- though I would cut little slices of candied cherries to make poinsettia cookies. Is your mince pie real mince? Or is it the brown jellied fruit? Or mince has not had suet or meet in it forever.

[the_rck]

The main family food tradition that I've kept is Christmas porridge. My mother learned to make it when she was an exchange student in Sweden, and she made it every Christmas morning as a special meal. It's a rice porridge made with lots of milk.

You're supposed to put an almond in for luck. That is, whoever gets the almond is supposed to have a lucky year. The last few years, we've put in dates because we thought I was allergic to almonds. I'm not sure which we'll use this year. The date had the advantage that I could find it to make sure my daughter got it. The almond would be left more to chance. Maybe Delia's old enough now to accept if chance gives it to someone else.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

The rice porridge sounds a bit like congee, though I don't think congee is made with milk. What a sweet tradition with the almond! It looks like there are lot of traditions with hiding things in the food for luck. The only one I knew of putting the baby in the Mardi Gras King Cake.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

Mostly British background, apart from one American-born grandmother who was, as the saying goes, "more English than the English", apart from a lasting fondness for coffee. Wellinghall's family are entirely English.

Christmas morning always started with a stocking each through my childhood - a satsuma, nuts, chocolates, a few small presents. In theory we opened one present after breakfast and before church, the rest after lunch. In practice I can remember at least one year when we woke the adults with our squeeling at around four in the morning, and there were probably others.

Lunch was a fairly fixed turkey, sprouts, roast potatoes, other root veg, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread sauce. Then Christmas pudding (which always looked spectacular, apart from the year Uncle W discovered by practical experimentation that sherry doesn't have a high enough alcohol content to burn). The pudding is, I think, far more of an adult taste than a childhood one - I know quite a lot of people who didn't much care for it when small. This is probably just as well, given how much sugar there is around on Christmas day, starting with those early-morning chocolates. It's supposed to have silver charms or coins in - my grandmother kept a few old silver coins after decimalisation for this purpose. In theory, they are stirred into the pudding when it's first made, more than a month in advance, and whose plate they turn up in is entirely to luck. In practice I suspect widespread Christmas-day sleight of hand to ensure each child gets one.

There was rarely much demand for supper, but at some point in the late afternoon the cake appeared, together with mince pies. These don't contain mince, though they do generally contain suet. Wellinghall's family also produce jam tarts at this stage, which is a very useful tradition when there are children around who turn their noses up at all that dried fruit.

A traditional British Christmas involves a lot of mixed dried fruit cooked with spices and strong alcohol, in one form or another, partly I understand because they were available in earlier centuries, partly because they lend themselves to dishes which can be cooked well in advance, and therefore don't involve too much last minute faffing.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

OK this is like the third or fourth reference to "bread sauce." I've just looked it up and it's basically warmed milk or cream with bread added? Ive also never heard of satsumas before and looked them up. In the past 10 years or so, we've begun to get boxes of Spanish grown clementines in our markets. The Wiki entry for satsumas is very clear that they are not mandarins or clementines.

This predominance of dried fruit with spices and alcohol is really interesting -- I'm sure there is some tradition of that in American cooking, but I really don't know much about it. I wonder if there was ever much of it or if it fell out of favor. I'll have to peruse my old cookbooks and see what they say.

The real issue with our Thanksgiving is that so many of the dishes do involve last minute faffing, as you say. Gravy, mashed potatoes, carving the bird, and vegetables-not-in-casserole are all last minute. Is Casserole a term used in the UK? I think the closest is probably a gratin though that always implies to me a topping of crumbs or cheese or both and that's not always the case with casseroles.

Thanks so much for sharing your traditions!

Holiday meals

[(Anonymous)]

I live in Canada so we had Thanksgiving in mid-October. My British family adopted this holiday with enthusiam because it means a long weekend in October and we love turkey and cranberry sauce. This was not known to us until we moved to Canada in mid '60s. We could never get used to jello salads though, and I we still don't serve green salads along with roast meals. Though we will happily eat them if visiting someone. I hate pummpkin in every manifestation, though I love squash. I moved to Saskatchewan about 20 years ago. There is a strong Polish and Ukrainian presence here, and I discovered that every celebration meal, and mmost potlucks, include perogies and cabbage rolls. I quite like both so this is no hardship.

Our Christmas food traditions are basically English with some Canadian additons. We tend to have Tourtiere on Christmas eve. This is a Quebecois meat pie, usually made with ground beef, chicken or pork or a mixture. It is seasoned with cloves and nutmeg, giving an almost medieval taste. We cheat and use prepared pastry shells as my pastry making is awful. Christmas breakfast is baked ham, usually with some sort of mustard/fruit glaze, chutneys, rolls and Buck's Fizz. (mimosas in North American speak.) Since it is cut with orange juice, we don`t use real champagne, but a Spanish sparkling subsitute. We were allowed to open our stockings before breakfast, but presents have to wait until after breakfast.

Christmas dinner is served around 4:00 p.m.

Con`t.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry I hit return accidentally.

Dinner, if we are going all out, is turkey with stuffing, bread sauce, little sausage patties, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, possibly brussels sprouts and squash or some other vegetables, cranberry sauce and gravy.

In theory, there is usually Christmas pudding with whipped cream, but usually everyone is too full and it gets eaten the next day. When we were kids, it was often trifle instead of the pudding. We buy the pudding, don`t bother making it.

There are often snacks during the day, maybe mince pies or shortbread, and sometimes some sort of savoury appetizer. This uses up the``champage`` which has the advantage of going with anything.

When we lived in New Zealand for a few years, we experimented with pavlova as the dessert. I think we still did the roast dinner though. It wasn`t as hot in Wellington as it would be in Australia!

ClaireI

Re: Con`t.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

The subject of pastry wrapped around a savory filling is a fascinating subject for me. This is really ubiquituous across cuisines. In fact, I was interested enough in it to have Colonel Walker Smythe reflect on them at the funeral lunch of Guy Hill when he discovers to his disappointment that the corn meal hush puppy is not a samosa, wonton, pasty, pirogi, ravioli, dumpling, turnover, pot pie, or the savory filled pastry in all its myriad glory.

Jello salads are... hmmm... very much a regional thing and cultural. I know a really popular one I was still hearing about involved lime green jello, Sprite soda and pretzels. I know, I don't get it either. Growing up, it was an orange jello ringed mold filled with fake whipped cream, coconut, and mandarin oranges. I've not seen Jello salad at family gatherings in a long time -- and I don't know if they have fallen completely out of favor, or if it is that the families whose events I attend don't make them anymore.

And no green salad with roast meat? I've not heard that before! thank you for sharing your food traditions!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a fourth generation Texan and the traditional turkey bird is the norm here. That having been said, my family discovered a couple of years ago we don't like turkey! Thanksgiving for us included Papa's ribs with stuffing, cranberry chutney, asparagus, and homemade cherry pie.

Christmas varies, but I hear talk of beef wellington this year. The adults are all expected to organize a meal so nobody gets stuck in the kitchen. Meals change depending on who took a fabulous cooking class.

Doctor dolly

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

RIBS! that is so awesome. My mother in law (Irish) LOVES pork (the Muslims in the family notwithstanding) so we'll often get pork roasts at Christmas. Oh family. And what a great idea to take inspiration from the fabulous cooking class!

[linneasr.livejournal.com]

My Dad's family was English / British Isles descended, so the usual (turkey, white rolls, potatoes, apple pie). My Mum's family, on the other hand, were Russian / Ukrainian. So a week after the Roman Christmas, all that side of the family would assemble at my Baba and Dedu's house for the Orthodox Christmas celebration. OMG, talk about food! Pickled beets, roast lamb, vereniki, blintzi, and anything Baba could figure out how to cook. Delicious!

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

OMG YES! RUSSIAN Christmas! Vodka? and Blintzi! Lamb in winter!? That took planning! it was funny, in Romania, becasue there was so little Christianity left, there wasn't a lot of Christmas. It has become very Asian-focused with the celebration at New Year's.

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm, holiday food.

Thanksgiving for us is turkey and stuffing (we put sausage in our stuffing, which I thought everyone did? BUT APPARENTLY NOT) and mashed potatoes and various vegetables I don't like, like squash, and also caramelized onions which are awesome. And then pies for dessert, which I don't like either, so sometimes there are cookies and things. This year I did not go home, I went to visit family in the midwest, and surprise! Green bean casserole is good?!

Christmas Eve is Lebanese food (Dad's family is mainly Irish and Lebanese) which asdjakjhdkajsd omfg so good, and usually there is turkey and a big salad and some other things. And then Christmas Day is Mom's family, so either a turkey or a roast depending on who is cooking it. And then we always do Christmas cookies and fudge for Christmas! And if we are all very lucky my godmother will make truffles.

Easter is also Lebanese food, unless for some reason Mom cooks, and then we have ham. Either way, mmmmmmmmmm.

And then afterward the girls all clean up, obviously, and the guys go into the living room and watch football or fall asleep. As you do. /irritated

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Sausage in stuffing is very New England and Mid Atlantic (unless you do oysters) but I omit it or bacon since we have Muslims. you got a Midwest thanksgiving with green bean casserole! you will have to tell us what the recipe was, Animus and whether it included Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and Durkee's fried onions. The Lebanese food sounds terrific! Curiosity -- is this Christian Lebanese? I am assuming so given that you are describing Christian holidays but then my Muslim relatives are incredibly good sports about participating in and even hosting American family meal traditions that are not their own. Are the Christmas cookies very New England? Or Lebanese?

As for division of labor, whoever cooks does not clean. The men do help in that regard because the wives would kick their asses.

[autumnia]

It's taken me all day but I have finally caught up on all the posts -- I ended up saving this one for last with the sheer number of lengthy comments that followed.

Anyway, my family celebrated Thanksgiving every year with my grandparents when my grandfather was still alive. Having come to the States at a young age (I suspect he was in his late teens or early twenties), he was totally Americanized by the time my immediate family emigrated here back in 1980. So on our table, there was the turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce straight from the can, sweet potatoes and stuffing. But he didn't forget his roots though; there would always be a dish of sweet and sour pork as well. My mother, in an effort to add more vegetables to the table, would always bring a dish of Chinese greens (mustard, bok choy, etc... it would depend on what was available and fresh). I'm trying to remember about dessert, which I believe was apple pie and ice cream.

For the last Thanksgiving dinner we had with my grandfather, I think we (my sister, mother and I) ended up doing the cooking. He was still in very poor health (after surgery for colon cancer) by then and barely ate, but it was still a tradition of sorts. Since we were doing the cooking, I think we ended up using my cousin's recipe for the turkey (involved basting the bird in a sauce made from ketchup and Worcestershire sauce) and upgraded the cranberry sauce from plain old jellied to at least something resembling real cranberries.

We continued the cooking for a year or two after that, with my grandmother and my uncle's family coming over, but then we (my sister mainly) pretty much stopped. I miss having turkey and gravy and stuffing...

As for Christmas, Grandpa also baked a ham! Nothing too fancy but that much he did. (We also had a Christmas tree and when we were younger, my grandparents got us gifts and sometimes my relatives in Hong Kong sent over presents as well.) Chinese people don't really have traditions as Christmas isn't really a Chinese holiday (Lunar New Year is the big one) but I do find that we normally go out and have dim sum -- Chinatown is the one place you will definitely find open on Christmas Day. Personally, I enjoy the traditions of opening presents on Christmas Day as well as having a great meal. These days, I celebrate it in my own way -- I've got mince pies, tins of Christmas tea, and try to get my hand on some Buche de Noel and/or gingerbread men. And I put on the choral services from the Choir of King's College.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I love the inclusion of the chinese greens! It's like... errrmmm.. somebody ... who said that her italian family always had pasta at Thanksgiving. I am going to do a recipe exchange post because this has been so insightful into how families carry their traditions forward. Also, food. Oh and snitchnipped posted somewhere clips of the King's College choir in 1941 or 1942. It's wonderful!

Also, I have some lovely ginger recipes if you want to bake yourself!! Buche, however, is quite the project.