Something I love about Christmas is the traditions – and many of those revolve around food.
I love that we cook my great grandmother’s Christmas pudding every year. She would clean coins and stick them in the pudding for the kids to find. It is a great memory, although I don’t know how no one ended up chipping a tooth or choking on a stray coin.
I love that we make more side dishes than there are people attending lunch – that are laden with yummy things like rich sauces, macadamias and dried cranberries.
I love that we make food gifts to give our friends and loved ones, like chocolate truffles, shortbread and flavoured nuts.
I love that we collect non-perishable or long-life foods, like tinned mango, lollies, long-life custard or fruit cakes, for hampers for those who have less than we do.
However, another thing I love about Christmas is that even though we have some wonderful traditions around some of our Christmas food – our Christmas meals and traditions are also always changing and evolving.
Where once we may have had the traditional hot Christmas dinner, over the years it has changed to cold meats and salads to adapt to the summer heat. My great grandmother’s Christmas pudding, which was always served warm with brandy sauce, is now often mixed with ice-cream by the kids, to make a perfect cool Christmas treat.
And when once we ate the same left overs for days following Christmas, I love that now we have easy access online to so many recipes that we can take our Christmas staples and make completely different and delicious meals. Leg ham becomes a quiche filling or pizza topping, and pork becomes a yummy soft taco or pie filling. Just because we have traditions, doesn’t mean we have to be boring.
Over the years, I have had people tell me they worry they don’t have Christmas traditions, but the great thing is that traditions can always be started and adapted. And this is especially the case when it comes to Christmas foods.
What Christmas food traditions do you have in your family? And how have they changed over time?
