Christmas Food for Thought and Song
By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
An Accidental Anthropologist
No one can deny the holidays are steeped in age-old traditions (well, unless you are an ardent follower of Festivus!). What’s interesting is that many foods mentioned in Christmas songs are foreign to most Americans. But they sure do sound good.
The Nutcracker, written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” debuted in 1892 and features the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
Fruits back in old Europe were pretty scarce around the holidays. They did not grow locally, and most dishes were based on dried, preserved fruits. Sugar plums were no exception. Plums actually used to be a term to describe all dried fruits, such as prunes, apricots, dates, and cherries. These were chopped up and rolled in sugar to form balls, called sugar plums. Sometimes a hard sugar shell covered the fruit, which could also be combined with spices, nuts, and honey inside.
Meanwhile a 16th-century Christmas Carol called “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” says:
Now bring us some figgy pudding, And bring some out here.
But what is figgy pudding exactly? According to lore, wealthy people in Old England gave Christmas treats to carolers on Christmas Eve such as figgy puddings, which were like modern-day Christmas puddings. Christmas pudding is a thick soup consisting of raisins and wine. Both figgy pudding and Christmas pudding were based on an old Celtic dish called “frumenty.” Again, these all featured dried fruit, similar to sugar plums.
Pudding was traditionally created to use up old foods such as bread, rice, or milk. But of course, special things were made for holiday occasions.
A word to the wise: if you see kidney pudding or black pudding on a menu, they are not desserts. Now mince pie, another British holiday favorite that sounds like meat, is actually made with raisins and spices and is very sweet. This can easily be confused with mince meat pie, which does have things such as beef suet (fat) and organs that are sometimes called “sweet meats.” How confusing!
The Swiss were pretty serious people throughout the ages, which is where my mother is from. They don’t have any songs about Christmas foods such as Mailanderli cookies (which means from Milan) and a Swiss bread called Zopf (pronounced Zupfa) that I grew up with. Zopf is a lot like the Jewish bread called Challah, but differs in one significant way. Four strands of dough are weaved into a braid, unlike the three in Challah.
Each year my mother sweats as she tries to remember the intricate process of braiding the four lines of dough. We can’t even talk to her during this time and I usually make myself scarce. Unfortunately that means I’ve never learned to do it properly! The significance of four strands is still a mystery to me, but fear not dear readers, I will get to the bottom of it.
Now I am off to write a song about four strands of dough. The Swiss desperately need a Christmas food song!
Happy Holidays!
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, Suite101.com and more.