Christmas dinner is no longer what it used to be

Shift in modern family life played out around table

At holiday time, all the census stuff about changing families suddenly becomes real and personal.

It’s the rare family now that is of the traditional kind (mom, dad and kids) with grandma and grandpa, uncles, aunts and cousins living nearby.

Far from continuity and sameness, Christmas for many Canadian families now means different place cards every year. With blended families, stepfamilies and more relatives spread across the country and the world, it adds a whole other level of stress to a holiday beyond the perennial question of what to buy for someone who has everything.

Accommodating the crowded schedules of various relatives from near and far, as well as the blended and extended families, has even turned Christmas into a movable feast for some, with the big dinner maybe the day before, the day after or even cooked and served as lunch, so that some guests can head out to a second meal at another relative’s in the evening.

Some families have systems for determining whose “turn” it is to host dinner, or whose “year” it is to have the children ( but maybe not all the children, because there are half-siblings, as well as stepsons and daughters).

If there is no system, the negotiations/conversations/debates over who’s going where and when often starts just as summer vacations end.

Competition to see the precious children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews on Dec. 25 — or at all during the holidays — is increasingly intense now that the number of Canadian households without children outnumbers those with them. But all of that can create other problems. For those whose “turn” was last year for having grandma/grandpa/the kids, and for those who weren’t successful in negotiating either the role of host or a seat at the table, there’s an entire other bunch of considerations.

It might mean assembling an orphans’ dinner for those whose “turn” it isn’t. Or, it could mean weeks or months of sadness, followed by the realization that maybe there is nothing wrong with spending Dec. 25 alone at a movie theatre having popcorn and red licorice for dinner.

Of course, all of these changes don’t necessarily translate into fewer people at Christmas dinner. Often, there are more, with the numbers bolstered by congenial exes and their children and stepchildren sharing the turkey and pudding, by childless aunts and uncles, and by friends who can’t be with their own families.

With blended families, there are almost inevitably more grandparents as well. And, let’s not forget the great-grandparents, now that Canadians are living longer. My nieces and nephew have four and even five greatparents all vying to see them.

Of course, who’s at the table has also changed what’s on the table. Fewer Canadians have grown up with Anglo- Saxon traditions of turkey, figgy pudding, cabbage rolls, or tourtiere. Even if they did, it’s possible that at least one of them might be vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free, or that the person cooking the meal might be following the latest foodie trends.

However, there is good news for traditionalists this year. Instead of turducken, tofurkey or the dangerous deep-frying of the big bird, this year’s seasonal trends are all a bit retro, with mincemeat pies, Canadian rye whisky and Prosecco.

So this Christmas may not be like the ones you remember. But scraped of nostalgia, most of the ones you remember probably weren’t like that either.

Until the day she died, my grandmother would gleefully recall the Christmas when Uncle Jim (with my mother’s hairpiece askew on his head) came down the steps in my parents’ house, roaring out the lines from the opening stanza from Robert Service’s Cremation of Sam McGee about the strange things done under the midnight sun.

But grandma wasn’t there.

Which is precisely why on that particular Christmas, it wasn’t just the plum pudding that was drenched in brandy.