Come to the Table by Doris Christopher

Author:Doris Christopher [CHRISTOPHER, DORIS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446930765
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2010-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Holidays

It seems to me every family in America has at least one of the following: a turkey centerpiece fashioned from pinecones dating back to the kids’ grade-school days, a grandmother who’s so busy waiting on everyone that she’s always the last one to come to the table, and a child who annually raids the relish tray for black olives to stick on his fingers.

Furthermore, I’m convinced every family also has one of these: a story about the year Mom forgot to turn on the oven to roast the holiday bird; a tale of a turkey accidentally served stuffed with its own bag of giblets; an annual debate over the merits of live versus artificial Christmas trees; and a messy mishap involving an Easter egg that turned out, alas, to be raw.

But for all that, I suspect I’d be hard-pressed to find a single family that doesn’t believe holiday meals are worth all the effort it takes to create them, or that doesn’t look forward to these elaborate productions all year long. The rewards, like hungry relatives, come in a steady stream: the scent of celery and onions sizzling away in hot butter; the crisp breezes that blow through the kitchen when we fling open the back door to let out the heat; the sight of our loved ones sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, listening to Grandpa say grace. A whole day to spend with each other, our hearts, mouths, and bellies all full. Such are the singular joys that the holidays bring. And such are the memories that sustain us throughout the years, memories formed at our childhood tables, where lifelong traditions are born.

For most of us, after all, it is our mother’s stuffing we serve to our children, along with her cranberry salad and sweet potatoes—the kind with the marshmallows, Suzanne Orr reminds me, and not the kind with the weird glaze. “New recipes are fine for any other day,” Suzanne says, “but on Thanksgiving, I want those yams with marshmallows, and the Jell-O salad!”

So do I, which is why we Christophers save our experiments for some other day and stick with the tried-and-true favorites that have graced our holiday table for three generations or more. Even now, when I think of Thanksgiving, it’s my mother’s traditional meal that I picture: her bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy (doesn’t everyone believe their mom made the best gravy?), her wonderful fruit salad and pie. And although, sad to say, she is no longer with us, each time I re-create those special dishes, I feel like I’m holding a part of her close.

In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it’s easy to forget that more than meals, we’re also making memories that will stay with our children forever. Actually, I suspect we do realize it on some level, given the pressure we heap on ourselves every year to create the kind of holiday dinners that exist only in Norman Rockwell paintings or on the pages of food magazines. If only we could make our meals look like the pictures, we think everything else would be perfect.

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