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What creates a family tradition? Why is a certain vacation spot more special than another with the same basic attributes? Why must the family Christmas celebration repeat the annual ritual to seem authentic? Chances are, these events evoke memories of happy times, perhaps shared with loved ones who are long-gone. Traditions often become fixed in our minds as children, when we’re still learning how things ought to be done.
We’re entering the season of traditions. In the physical therapy clinic during this time, I routinely ask patients about their own cherished customs. Food is a favorite topic, particularly foods that must make it to the table at the family feast. I especially appreciate responses from patients I know are just a generation or two removed from an immigrant ancestor. I’ll often find someone in the family still preparing grandmother’s signature dish–or wishing they had the recipe. It’s a tangible memory that fills their heart, as well as their stomach.
This week, many of us are anticipating some special food as we gather for Thanksgiving dinner. Will we be disappointed? It may depend on who does the cooking. My wife seemed satisfied with her forage among the food offered at her first Thanksgiving with my family–until she had a chance to speak to me alone. “Where are the mashed potatoes?” It seems for her, the meal is incomplete without them. But mashed potatoes were not part of our tradition.
Not that we truly had a rigid tradition regarding food. Then, as now, I’ll tuck into whatever is served. I welcome new foods. But given my druthers, a short list of simple fare must also be present. The first is an oven-baked turkey. I won’t turn down your fried or smoked fowl, and I’ll even eat your ham without complaint, but I favor my wife’s browned-in-the-bag bird. I also like her dressing creation, a hybrid of her mother’s stuffing and my mother’s Southern cornbread dressing
The Thanksgiving spread should also be colorful, with a couple of green vegetables and a dollop of cranberries to balance the richness of the other foods. And please remember the sweet potatoes. My wife was introduced to my mother’s sweet potato casserole topped with brown sugar and pecans at the meal referred to earlier. Which brings me to my first Thanksgiving with my in-laws, during a trip to California.
After a few days’ hiking among redwoods, over black-sand beaches and with elk in northern California, my wife and I headed toward her parents’ home in Paso Robles. Along the way, we stopped for a bag of Gravenstein apples for her mother’s homemade pie. As we entered the market, I noticed a bin of sweet potatoes, and suggested we purchase a few. “My family won’t eat them” was her response. I don’t remember my reply, but we arrived in Paso Robles with sweet potatoes.
That evening, after checking her mother’s menu and deciding it was lacking, my wife asked me to place a call back East to secure the topping recipe. The next day, my mother’s casserole graced the Thanksgiving buffet alongside the mashed potatoes. I tried to hide a smug smile when I noticed the empty dish as I came around for seconds. My wife’s niece borrowed the recipe, thus establishing a new, transplanted tradition, observed over the past 25 years.
What about you? What’s your family tradition at this time of year? Is it food, or something else that makes your holiday complete?
Polishing the silver and setting out my mom’s wedding china for a small gathering tomorrow. Will be very blessed to have two of the three kids with me as well as my sister and partner. God is good.
Although we never ate turkey before arriving in the US we adopted and we would eat it along with stuffed grape leaves, spinach and cheese pies and of course a large Greek salad. Our potatoes would be traditional Greek oven potatoes cooked with olive oil, lemon and oregano.
My family’s meal traditions were focused much more on the Passover Seder than Thanksgiving, and with no real family remaining (my two siblings aren’t people I’d wish to share a phone call with, let alone a meal) I’ve been overtaken by the traditions of my Chinese wife and her mother — birthday noodles handmade by Mama, assuring a long and wealthy life, and Chinese New Year dumplings laboriously handmade and stuffed with my favorite sausage.
So at my house Thanksgiving will be just another Thursday, with them eating tofu and rice soup and unidentifiable veggies purchased last week from the Asian store in Federal Way, and me savoring a frozen pizza and the glorious return of the traditional Thanksgiving NFL game between my Bears and the Lions. (I’m sure they’ll replay Dave Williams’ kickoff return in overtime to win the game for the Bears in 1980, my fondest Turkey Day memory.)
Traditions are where you find them, I guess. For me, my wife’s kiss and Mama’s gentle hug and rubbing the dog’s ears are all the tradition I could ever want, and I can have them every day.
I love hearing about the food traditions of other cultures. I know a woman who adds her Puerto Rican and her husband’s mother’s German dishes to the traditional menu. One year, a nurse/patient brought samples of Venezuelan Christmas foods. The tamales were wrapped in banana leaves, rather than corn husks.
This year, apparently there was a local shortage of elements for the Seder. My friend Max was concerned, and search a number of stores, but managed to find the needed food.
I have to work a bit at deeply connecting with another person. Sharing a tradition provides a medium for allowing the feelings to flow.
Ed, I’ll happily split my frozen pizza with you to extend such a connection. You want meatballs on there to go with the extra havarti and cheddar?
If there’s pizza, my wife will want to share the tradition. And the Chinese vegetables sound interesting. I’m trying to figure out how to make yo choy sum happy in my garden.
Great post, Edmund. On the food side, our family has traditionally been untraditional. My wife grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and I have long had an affinity for hot and spicy food.
As a kid growing up in Dallas, my family had the typical Thanksgiving dishes: turkey & gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, etc. But when our kids were growing up, we all voted for an alternative menu: fajitas, guacamole, Mexican rice & beans, homemade salsa, homemade flour tortillas, etc. I grill the fajitas and make the guacamole and my wife does everything else (she’s a terrific cook).
In any event, over the years we have had much to give thanks for, and that tradition continues unaltered.