My guess is that if you ask a bunch of people what truly "means Christmas" to them, you'd get a lot of different answers!
As I have alluded to a few times in the past, my most significant memories of Christmas were always related to food, and that often involved helping my mother in the kitchen as she prepared a veritable cornucopia of delicacies that we would enjoy all the way from December 23rd till close to New Year's.
The holiday food in our house always stood in an interesting contrast to the generally fairly minimal/austere meals we would have during the year.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the food — in fact much of it was quite high quality — but there just wasn't very much of it. And that wasn't because we were poor, rather it was because my mother (who controlled the kitchen) was of the persuasion that "you can never be too rich or too thin."
Perhaps not the ideal philosophy to apply when you were trying to raise a rapidly growing boy, but since I knew nothing different I thought it was simply normal.
I do remember mentioning to my mother that some of my school friends had as many as 3-4 little sandwiches in their lunch boxes while I had only one and a piece of fruit, and her standard answer was that she "didn't want me to get FAT."
But I digress.
I will be doing a lot of cooking tomorrow, in a (reduced) attempt at recreating the Christmas foods of of my childhood in Denmark. There is a certain group of flavors and smells that spell "Christmas" to me, and I don't mind being in charge of the food... and Mrs. Denmarkguy is quite content to have "traditional Danish" rather than "traditional American" for Christmas dinner!
I suppose we all create our individual traditions and memories once we grow up and move away from our parental influences... in our case, we have a blending of Scandinavian and American that works for us, but likely wouldn't "feel right" to anyone outside our small circle.
We traveled a lot during my childhood, and one of the things I learned from being part of many different cultures was precisely that holiday traditions are so very different, depending on where you are.
Whereas we took some degree of our Danish-ness with us when we spent time overseas, my parents were never really that attached so we often took to local customs.
As I have aged, I find myself more drawn to the food and traditions of my childhood... I guess the things we're exposed to during our formative years leave a strong impression... and somehow they feel "more right" than many of the others I've come across.
We used to have more people gathered for Christmas dinner, but we have gradually cut back to where we are just 5-6 people, which is comfortable and not overwhelming.
For now, I mostly just need a good night's sleep, before I start cooking.
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Christmas!
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Created at 2024.12.25 02:17 PST
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