Christmas Traditions

[MicBacchus]

When my kids were small, they and their dad went fishing and crabbing during the summer (selling crabs to supplement a teacher's salary), and we always saved some for a Christmas Eve stew. When my son was about 4, he asked for one of my recipe cards to write his Christmas stew 'recipe'. Over the years, with the addition of shrimp and oysters, the stew evolved into a gumbo to celebrate my son's birth in Baton Rouge, and where I began my culinary adventure. This year, for the first time in 10 years, my son and daughter and their families, plus my husband and I, will be together to renew this tradition of seafood stew and the traditional reading of the "Cajun Night Before Christmas". I may finally part with the cherished 'recipe' and give it to my son. My daughter's son, who at the ripe age of almost 3 has helped me stir and prep meals for about a year, will receive his own wooden spoon. Hopefully this, too, will become a tradition.

[srhcb]

We always had a large orange, (purloined from the Harry & David's gift basket my grandfather always sent), in the toe of our Christmas stockings. I'd always assumed it was to add weight and insure the stocking hung straight.

My Serbian grandmother always had pomegranates in a bowl on the dining room table during the Holiday Season, (Serbian/Orthodox Christmas comes on January 7th). I don't know why. There was also a large bowl of nuts in their shells with an assortment of nut crackers and picks.

SB (liked the marzipan strawberries in the H&D Basket so much I couldn't bear to eat them. Many years later I'd discover them still wrapped in cellophane, hard as rocks! )(wish I could have saved money like that )

[Allura]

My Serbian grandmother always had pomegranates in a bowl on the dining room table during the Holiday Season, (Serbian/Orthodox Christmas comes on January 7th).  I don't know why. 

You might find some hints to how the pomegranate relates to Christmas here. Looks like it evolved from Greek mythology about Perephone eating pomegranate seeds while trapped in the underworld with Hades.

My husband has introduced me to an orange in the stocking, but my family traditionally has a course of fruits & nuts on Christmas Eve, before dessert is served.

Christmas dinner usually involves pasta & a roast, but the specifics vary according to what we feel like doing and how many people are coming.

[pamjsa]

When my kids were small, they and their dad went fishing and crabbing during the summer (selling crabs to supplement a teacher's salary), and we always saved some for a Christmas Eve stew.  When my son was about 4, he asked for one of my recipe cards to write his Christmas stew 'recipe'.  Over the years, with the addition of shrimp and oysters,  the stew evolved into a gumbo to celebrate my son's birth in Baton Rouge, and where I began my culinary adventure.  This year, for the first time in 10 years, my son and daughter and their families, plus my husband and I, will be together to renew this tradition of seafood stew and the traditional reading of the "Cajun Night Before Christmas".  I may finally part with the cherished 'recipe' and give it to my son.  My daughter's son, who at the ripe age of almost 3 has helped me stir and prep meals for about a year, will receive his own wooden spoon.  Hopefully this, too, will become a tradition.

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MicBacchus, I love this tradition (both the seafood stew and the wooden spoon). My daugher loves to cook, and I've tried to get both of my kids involved in planning the holiday meals. I want them to be an occasion my kids look forward to as much as the present-opening or anything else. This morning my daughter suggested that her "Crunchy Munchy Salad"--a recipe she came up with on her own about a year ago--could be adapted for the Orange Meal by substituting mandarin orange slices for the strawberries in her original version. I hadn't even thought of that, but it made complete sense. So now we'll have a salad of spinach and romaine, plus sugar snap peas, pecans and mandarin oranges.

I like the idea of doing something with mango, too--that's a flavor we all enjoy.

[highchef]

carrot souffle'? for your orange dinner??

salmon?

I'm from Lousiaina as well, and the tradition for our family(ies) has been a seafood gumbo on Christmas eve...I tried to get out of it one year and was chided as being cheap. They hit the nail on the head, though..that gumbo can set you back a few hundred bucks, if you make it right!

Yes, it's on the menu for this year as well.

I did give up on turkey for Christmas though, I'd rather do a ham, or a pork crown than have that much turkey soo soon after Thanksgiving. If I do the ham for Christmas, then I have the bone for the black eyed peas, and keep a little meat back for the cabbage at New Years!

[Milagai]

Orange suggestion:

Mafe (African peanut stew - yummy delicious)

there's a cook off going on on the other board (Cooking?) right now...

Milagai

[Carrot Top]

Or of course you could always make something from orange lentils. . . a nice Indian soup filled with warming spices perhaps. . .

[jgarner53]

When I was growing up, we always had fondue for Christmas Eve dinner - the kind with the oil & steak cubes. I don't know how it got to be a tradition, but I loved it! My mom insisted on covering the table with this ghastly (even then) gold oilcloth table cover which forever had bits of glitter embedded in it from previous crafts projects. I only liked the warm chutney and never indulged in the other sauces (if I could remember what they were). But I loved that bubbly pot of oil (I think even the fondue pot was harvest gold - can you tell I grew up in the 70's? ).

Even growing up in ORANGE county, in Southern California, we, too, got the oranges in the toe of our stocking, which did kind of baffle me, at least until I'd read Little House on the Prairie.

For Christmas breakfast, we unfailingly had scrambled eggs & bacon, and thawed frozen strawberries that came in the small rectangular cans. For a long time there was coffee cake, too (probably from a mix), but later we graduated to cinnamon rolls, and last year I brought croissants and sticky buns from the bakery where I work. Not exactly a highbrow or elegant Christmas morning breakfast, but those strawberries were the absolute highlight for me! My brother and I would try to trick each other to get the other's berries, "Look, an elephant!" and such.

This year will be the first year that my husband and I will be at home by ourselves with no family on Christmas. But you can be sure breakfast will be scrambled eggs, bacon, and sticky buns. I haven't decided about the strawberries yet.