Holiday meals offer a taste of tradition
Dishes evoke nostalgia, nourish family ties
When Devin Kidner was a child, she looked forward to the box of goodies her aunt sent from England each December. In addition to chocolates and gifts, the box contained powdered mustard and custard, pickles and other foods her father needed to prepare the family’s annual Christmas meal.
A British native who moved to the U.S., Graham Kidner relishes the chance to share the foods of his childhood with his family, said his daughter, now 31 and living in Chicago.
“This is his way to feel connected to his family,” she said. “It keeps him tied to England.”
The meal, along with regular visits “across the pond,” helped Kidner appreciate her heritage. She can’t imagine eating anything other than a traditional English roast on Christmas. “It wouldn’t be Christmas without the food,” she said.
Holidays meals are an easy way for children to absorb lessons about their ethnicity and ancestors, says Amy Bentley, a professor of food studies at New York University. Because eating and dining together involve all the senses, it creates powerful memories.
“It’s nutrition, but it’s also culture,” she said. “It’s a way of saying, this is who we are, and this is what’s important.”
The internet and the popularity of import stores and specialty grocers have made it easier to access beloved foods at the holidays.
Leslie Srodek-Johnson of Stan’s Northfield Bakery, which sells handmade perogies in Northfield, Ohio, says the shop increases production of the potato-filled dumplings tenfold in December. Perogies are commonly served at Christmas and during Lent in many Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian households.
The demand is so great that Stan’s stops taking pierogi orders two weeks before Christmas. Srodek-Johnson has had people show up at the bakery with tattered recipes or lists of ingredients asking whether she could help reproduce their grandmother’s perogies.
She and her family use their great aunt’s traditional recipe.
“We have found a lot of people just can’t reproduce grandma’s handiwork at home,” Srodek-Johnson said. “Many people tell us that ours are as good or better.”
The Kennedy clan in Beresford, S.D., is determined to keep their potato sausage recipe in the family. Every December, the various generations gather to make the sausage that Katie Kennedy Westra’s great, great grandma brought from Sweden.
“Grandma tells us all what to do,” she said. “It’s always such a hoot.”
The family serves the sausage with mustard and lingonberries at its Christmas celebration. While the meal remains a way for Westra and her siblings to stay connected to their roots, they recently discovered their family in Sweden no longer makes the sausage.
“I have a cousin over there who never even heard of it,” said Westra, 35. “She asked me to send the recipe.”
Regardless, she said, the tradition has already taken hold in her family’s next generation. “My oldest is in 4-H and she wrote a speech about her Swedish heritage for the state fair,” Westra said. “She’s very into it.”
Dustin Shearon, 45, would never attempt to make Moravian Sugar Cake, his favourite holiday treat, at home. For him, the store-bought version brings back memories of his mother and grandmother taking him to Dewey’s Bakery in his hometown, Winston-Salem, N.C. The cinnamon and sugar coffee-style cake, which was brought to the region by Moravian settlers in the mid-1700s, remains a local favourite. Shearon was delighted to discover that a grocery store in his new home of Charlotte, N.C., had started stocking Dewey’s cake at the holidays. It offered him a way to share stories about his childhood with his son and daughter. “It’s a connection to my past, and a way to talk about the life I shared with my mom and grandma,” he said.
Shearon serves the cake on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not having it, he says, “would be like not having sweet potato casserole on Thanksgiving.”
Ann Jones ships cinnamon sticks from The Original Goodie Shop in Columbus to her grandchildren in New York every Thanksgiving and Christmas to give them a taste of Ohio, where she grew up.
“My grandchildren have never been to Ohio,” said Jones. “They don’t have any connection to Columbus, but they love cinnamon sticks.”