Christmas is a time for tradition. I'm not thinking here about the Feast of the Incarnation. That's rarely enhanced by traditions. I'm speaking here about what I call the cultural Christmas; you know, trees, presents, lights, parties. Christmas is a wonderful celebration and I have no illusions about it being a Christian holiday. I realize that most of our "Christmas traditions" have pagan roots and that while there is no conflict between the Feast of the Incarnation and a modern Christmas, they should not be considered to be synonymous.
But this isn't about theology. It's about traditions, specifically food traditions. We've never had a traditional Christmas meal in my ethnically mongrel family. There are no "must haves" on the table as there are at Thanksgiving (other than mashed potatoes. The Irish always asserts itself there). We usually have some kind of roast meat and vegetables to go with it. But Christmas means Christmas cookies.
I have some very early memories of my mom trying to make spritz cookies at Christmas but she always had trouble with the pastry gun and thought they were just too much trouble. From about 1965 on, the signature Christmas cookie in our house was Czechoslovakian fruit bars. My dad was half Czechoslovakian (though since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the break-up of that country into two countries, I'm not sure where we fall -- I THINK it's Slovak), so we claimed them as "our" Christmas cookies. Mom had gotten the recipe from a neighbor, who had risked her mother-in-law's wrath by sharing the real recipe without unnecessary additions or intentional deletions. It is a kind of putzy recipe, so old that it requires sifting granulated sugar and sifting the flour twice. Walnuts must be chopped very, very fine, almost to a bread crumb consistency. That was my job, and it was tedious with a small, almost sharp paring knife. It's all mixed by hand and then patted into the pan, layered, topped and smoothed with a spoon dipped in water. And they're delicious. I make them every year, these days with an automatic chopper and a battery operated sifter, and to me they are essential for Christmas.
In high school my brother brought home a recipe for pfefferneuse, the German spice cookies. For years my mom had bought a package at Christmas, and we expected to have them, but we never suspected that you could MAKE them! Since my mom has some German heritage, I tried it. It was a long, involved recipe which created a very stiff dough, required overnight refrigeration. They were good, but made about 5 dozen more pfefferneuse than anyone wanted to eat. I stopped making them after a few years, and my own children never liked them, either homemade or store-bought, so they fell off the list of traditional requirements.
Somewhere along the line we picked up "Santa Snacks." Those are the seven layer bars that a certain large food conglomerate publishes periodically, where you top a graham cracker crust with walnuts, coconut, semi-sweet chips and condensed milk. I tried making them once with milk chocolate chips for my daughter who doesn't like dark chocolate -- they were okay, but not the same. This year, since my husband suspects that he might be allergic to walnuts I tried making them with pecans, and just because I had some left over from another recipe, I threw in some of those new meltable caramel bits that are in the bakery aisle. Again, they were okay, but not the same.
My freshman year in college I visited my roommate at her home over Christmas break and she served date-nut bars that were a tradition in her home. I liked them, and borrowed the recipe. I've made them ever since, though last year I noticed that they were always the last of the cookies to be finished, and I think I even wound up throwing some very stale pieces. I like them -- but I really didn't want to eat a whole batch by myself. So I tried a tweak this year. Instead of dates and walnuts I made them with dried cranberries and pecans. I thought about putting in some orange rind, but decided when it was too late to zest the orange (and I was tired and too lazy to do it), so I made an icing of powdered sugar and orange juice to top it. It feels like I honored the traditional recipe, but with a few changes to meet the needs of the day.
And that's how traditions should be -- when they meet our needs, the needs of the heart and soul, they should be honored. And we might even maintain them for a while when they no longer seem quite right, because let's face it, our hearts are sometimes uncertain of what they want or need, and that tradition might be perfect again in a year or two. We may make certain changes so that they continue to meet our needs in a new way. But to maintain a tradition for its own sake rather than for our sake, whether around the holidays or in any other area of our life, is an unnecessary burden. If you maintain a tradition that has become a burden to you because someone else likes it, offer them the honor of taking it over to maintain it. If they decline, it's obviously not as important as they say it is.
One tradition I'd like to jettison is being a basket case of exhaustion on Christmas morning. I'm working on it.
