Christmas Eve dinner
Published December 25, 2005
It never occurred to me before, but there are some people who do not celebrate Christmas Eve. For some people, it's just the day before Christmas.
In my family, there has been a big set of traditions regarding Christmas Eve.
First of all, we open our gifts on Christmas Eve. It has to do with my family's rejection of Santa Claus, based on religious grounds that he takes away emphasis from Christ. I think my oldest brother was permitted the myth, but by the time I came along the religious fever had pitched a battle against the jelly bellied father of Christmas.
Not given the opportunity to believe the story, I didn't really miss it. The fact was, we opened the presents a day earlier than some others, and that seemed a good trade off.
Since we did not do away with the stockings, I felt that it drew the festivities out nicely, to have presents on Christmas eve and then extra little presents in our stockings on Christmas morning, and candy!
The stockings always had a mandarin orange in the toe, to weight it down, and the rest was filled with candy and little toys. Naturally, we ate the candy for breakfast. And we'd eat the orange too, to get something healthy in there.
We could also eat any leftover cookies or anything given to us as Christmas treats for breakfast. Mom would make a real breakfast too, but that would take a long time to actually hit the table. The cookies, candy canes, and fudge would be the first course.
That's not to say that there were not non-sugary traditional Christmas goodies in the mix. But those types of things would be served as appetizers after Christmas Eve dinner and then later, before Christmas dinner itself.
That was part of our Christmases; we always had lots of hors d'oeuvre-y things sitting around to snack on. Our appetites were never in danger of being spoiled; my family could always eat.
This Christmas I spent away from my family. But I take my traditions with me.
This year I made Christmas Eve dinner for Chris's family. They had no Eve tradition. So I made our traditions for their dining pleasure.
Of course, you can never go home again. Things have to be changed with the times.
First of all, Chris's family is not the gluttons mine are. The have appetites that can be "spoiled" for dinner.
- Christmas Eve dinner
- Published: December 25, 2005
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Writer: Murphy
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It never occurred to you that some people do not celebrate Christmas??? My goodness! How about several billion people! Typical insulated American.
I'm with you, Murphy.....my mother is from Germany, and we always had our big Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. We ate pickled herring, potato salad, stollen, and all the cookies and candy we could stand. We opened gifts, and family friends would stay up late drinking. Then on Christmas morning, my parents would make a big breakfast that no one would eat because everyone was too tired and/or hungover, but we weren't bothered with waking up early for presents. We could sleep late and then spend the day eating, drinking more, and watching football. My dad was always in a bad mood, all part of the holiday.
I miss those Christmases.....I've tried to replicate some of those holiday traditions with my own family. Some things took, some didn't, and I'm stuck with waking at 5am to open presents with my children. My husband's family has NO holiday tradtion whatsoever, something I still, after 12 years, do not understand, but whatever. I just hope that my children look back on the Christmases of their youth as fondly as I do.
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Takes real chutzpah to link your own cooking story to the wickedly funny writing of James Lileks and the consistently unappetizing fare he skewers in The Gallery of Regrettable Food.
Well done!