Christmas Traditions: What foods from your heritage do you include in your celebrations?
 

My family is primarily of German and Swedish descent. My mother has always served oyster stew for Christmas Eve dinner and rice pudding on Christmas Day. Since travelling to Germany, specifically since visiting Nurnberg (Nuremberg) I have added Lebkuchen to my tradition. It is a dense honey almond cookie that is delicious! I can't replicate it exactly, but enough to satisfy my cravings. I have had it shipped here as well. My in-laws serve a (Swedish?) fruit soup that I used to politely force down, but now that I have been married over 20 years, I am less polite...yuch!
Happy Holidays, Fodorites!

My family is from Southern Maryland. At Christmas, EVERYONE in that part of the US has oysters on the halfshell, followed by oyster stew. Fried oysters and stuffed ham are the traditional main course.

Homemade fall apart coconut cake and boiled custard!

My mom is from England and so we usually will have yorkshire pudding (although we eat it throughout the year also as I love them), but we also have to have crackers (not the food)..they are fun, and we usually eat dinner with the hats on that come out of the crackers, silly, but we have fun with it!

We have all the traditional Christmas foods, but it wouldn't be the holiday without one thing:

Miniature cans of Kraft parmsan cheese in our stockings.

Anyone remember the book "Santa Mouse"? Well, many decades ago we starting leaving cheese out for him along with Santa's cookies, milk (and sometimes Santa's Kentucky bourbon).

Santa left us toys in exchange; Santa Mouse left us Kraft parmesan. Still does.

My husband is from Southern Maryland so we always have his oyster stew on Christmas Eve.

vegasnative, we, too, always have Christmas Crackers to celebrate our English heritage, and everyone HAS to wear the paper crown or they don't get to eat! :-)

Another thing we do is make my late sister's applesauce cake, to honor her as well as my husband's late mother (she always baked them, too.)

Two weeks from today? WHY am I sitting here typing??? :-O

One of my grandmother's was from Virginia. I always bake a Smithfield ham at Christmas.

Italian so, Christmas Eve is a traditional dinner... red sauce, pasta, sausage, meatballs, sliced orange salad, etc. Fried dough in powdered sugar (pizza frite?), anise knot cookies, or pitzelles for dessert.

I'm with Suze.....Italian food! Christmas eve is at my house. My mother and I will make lasagna. I make a big pot of sauce with meatballs, Italian sausage, pork....YUM!!! (If my grandmother was still here we'd be making home-made ravioli and throw in a brasciole or two - but I'm not grandma)!

There's a little Italian bakery around the corner, so I'll walk over there on Christmas eve day and get some fresh Italian bread and cannoli's for dessert!!!

Everyone say "MOO!" :-)

Here in the south, its all about the cornbread "dress'in"...that's stuffing to the rest of the world. My mom is the current "dress'in" queen to our family and friends, although she always downplays this. I try, but its never as good.

The thing my step-dad HAS to have is "apple salad"...otherwise known as Waldorf Salad (he wouldn't know what I was talking about if I called it THAT!lol!
If they are guests ANYWHERE, they have to know first, if that is going to be served. If not, they bring it!

The difficult thing is, although my sons/their wives are now adults (well, duh!), they have never liked the whole traditional turkey or ham, dressing, cranberry sauce, congealed salad or ambrosia (either or both a must for my DH's mother). They require some mac and cheese, asparagus (from the can, not fresh) or Leseur Peas.


I guess our MUST amongst the sons/DH is our traditional Clam dip on Christmas Eve ( along with other sweets, dips, etc.)....they LOVE it...and they always have to confirm with me that we'll have some ready!

Belle

We always have my mother's jam cake, but she made hers with homemade blackberry jam that was jucier than store bought and made her cake more moist and better. She could also make caramel icing that wouldn't crack and fall off the cake without resorting to cheating by partially cooking the caramel and finishing off with beating in powdered sugar.

Mouth-watering thread! Katie2, I'm from Virginia too. We brought back a Smithfield ham from VA this summer to serve for Christmas in CA (Smithfield hams are hard to find in CA). It's hanging in the garage just waiting for me to scrub the mold off prior to soaking it for 48 hours before simmering it in water that just barely "wiggles," as opposed to water hot enough to bubble. DH and DS have already requested homemade biscuits for a Christmas dinner "go-along."

Also traditional in my Southern family are oysters in many forms, spiced peaches (a savory accompaniment), and various desserts such as fresh coconut cake, ambrosia, boiled custard (not all served every year).

Oh, dear, I've lived away from "home" for so long now I'm forgetting the Polish names for food...or is that a sign of old age?!? ;-)

Christmas always included food from Poland where my mother's parents came from. Poppy seed bread and home made polish sausage from the Barshefsky (sp?) family in Delaware were my favorite things. Mom use to mail us a package of sausage each year but after years of searching I finally found an excellent Polish sausage made here in Texas; I have yet to attempt to make the poppy seed bread. Also, I make a big batch of my mom's home made eggnog for a Christmas party DH and I host each year.

Why am I always so hungy after reading these posts! :-?

Polish heritage on both sides of our family too, AnnMarie. Christmas Eve - pierogi stuffed with potatoes (fondly known as Russian pierogi) or sauerkraut. Christmas morning breakfast of egg cassarole, smoked kielbasa and poppy seed cake.

Southern Belle, we had guests from Texas for THGVG this year - she asked if she could make the cornbread dressing, or her family wouldn't think it was the real holiday. YUM!

My mom's family is of English descent and I grew up having a lamb dinner complete with my grandmother's Christmas pudding every Christmas day. Occasionally we'd have Yorkshire puddings as well.

... we have another tradition of a seafood/crab chowder on Christmas eve, I'm not entirely sure where that one came from, but it is something we've been doing since I was a child.

A fairly recent but now firmly etablished Christmas dinner tradition is Steak in a Bag accompanied by creamed spinach. Other Side Dishes optional. Oh yes, a good Cabernet Sauvignon

:-B

One word - TAMALES :)

With my Scandinavian background, we are used to lefse and lots of Swedish and Norwegian Christmas cookies. Now that the Grandparents are no longer alive we don't have lutefisk - thank heavens!! Love the lefse (much like a tortilla but more tender and made with potatoes) and cookies tho. Happy Holidays Everyone!

We live in Tucson and tamales are a tradition for us. We also have split pea soup on Christmas Eve and I don't know where that tradition comes from. Since I was a child it's been a part of our Christmas.

We always have seafood for Christmas Eve - lobsters, shrimp and clam chowder.
Christmas Dinner is always prime rib! Not really based on any ethnic tradition - we just like it. Though the seafood on Christmas Eve may have been a variation of the seven fishes that some Italians do.