So What Do You Eat on Christmas Day?

As I shopped around the neighborhood over the last couple of weeks, waiting on lines in the bread store, the fish store and other markets, I invariably found myself being asked those holiday related questions: “Are you finished with your shopping? Who's doing the holiday? Where do you get your fish for Christmas Eve? and What do you eat on Christmas Day?”

The answer to the Christmas Day question that is posed to any of us is usually reflective of our roots. Mine happen to be Italian and so growing up in Carroll Gardens meant that we had a nice lasagna (or sometimes manicotti) and prime rib with maybe stuffed artichokes and/or peas and mushrooms on Christmas Day. Of course, that was after a breakfast of struffoli and Italian Christmas cookies from Court Pastry and an early lunch of seafood salad, baked clams, linguini with clam sauce, fried shrimp and baccala fritters all leftover from the Feast of the Seven (Plus) Fishes from the night before and maybe a small antipasto. No wonder my dad ended most holidays with a fizzy glass of Brioschi.

Everyone who has seen or read “A Christmas Carol” knows that after he woke up from a troubled night of ghost-filled dreaming, Mr. Scrooge sent a young boy to fetch a prize turkey. I know many people have what amounts to a second Thanksgiving dinner on Christmas Day, replete with turkey, stuffing and all the trimmings. I actually never heard of that when I was growing up. My family never had turkey after Thanksgiving; turkey was pretty much a single holiday thing for us.

In that other more recent holiday classic, “A Christmas Story,” you will recall the hilarious ending when the family winds up having Peking Duck at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day after their turkey was mauled by the neighbor’s wild dogs. Some of my Jewish friends have asked us for some good Chinatown recommendations with the plan to have Chinese for their Christmas dinner. My husband is Chinese-American but I do not recall us ever having Chinese food for Christmas dinner.

Most of my Italian-American friends and neighbors have a meal that includes a baked pasta like lasagna or manicotti. When dropping off my Christmas Eve antipasto order at Caputo’s Fine Foods, I naturally got to talking food with Christian who works behind the counter. He told me that his mother makes a heavenly-sounding pasta al forno with anelli pasta (little rings), peas and bechamel each Christmas.

But those baked pastas are not just found on the tables of Italian-American families. My high school friend and lifelong Carroll Gardens neighbor, Maureen, told me that after a big breakfast of French toast, bacon and oatmeal, her Irish mom always made lasagna or stuffed shells on Christmas but that was in addition to cold antipasto, fruit cup, a crown roast, her special mashed potatoes, peas, candied carrots, asparagus, creamed pearl onions followed by homemade cookies, pie and Italian pastry.

Another high school friend, my sista-friend Marsha dazzles with her culinary skills. This year she’s making jerk seasoned pineapple chipotle glazed ham, collard greens, mac n cheese, cornbread pudding, and cranberry pear chutney. And when she was growing up in Brooklyn, her mom made stuffed crown roast (from Anthony's Meat Market on Court Street, now long gone), a duck or Cornish hens, mac n cheese, rice and peas, collard greens, string beans and potatoes, mashed yellow turnips, Parker house rolls and, for dessert, a layer cake, ice cream, and Caribbean fruit cake.

My friend, Doris, another lifelong Carroll Gardens resident whose family hails from Puerto Rico, enjoys a sumptuous Latino Christmas feast. It includes pasteles, pernil, arroz con gandules, Spanish-style potato salad, sweet potatoes and, for dessert, arroz dulce flan and a Jesus birthday cake! And they wash it all down with a special holiday drink called coquito which is a Spanish eggnog.

While I would love to try some different Christmas fare, I usually stick with tradition even if my traditions have changed. After my husband and I got married, we spent Christmas Day with his family. My Chinese mother-in-law who was born and raised in Jamaica, West Indies, served a completely American Christmas Day meal and in recent years, I have adopted her tradition. We swapped out the lasagna for her famous scalloped potatoes which even after 28 years of marriage, I still have to check with her to make sure I’m making them right. We also have a prime rib roast, my Uncle Louis’ cranberry relish and some veggies. Even with the potatoes, I could not completely relinquish the pasta so we usually start with tortellini in brodo with lots of chopped parsley and a generous sprinkle of grated cheese.

Of course we’ll follow it up with coffee, homemade cookies, a panettone, See’s candy, torrone, clementines and some finnochio (fennel), figs, chestnuts, and maybe a little bit of Limoncello or Amaretto to help with the digestion!

Getting back to that lasagna, you might wonder how you could fit in such a huge, rich dish after the previous evening’s Christmas Eve feast. I don’t know how we did it, but we did manage to make it and eat it, even when we were much thinner. I often find myself wishing there was a day between Christmas Eve and Christmas day to recuperate a bit but that’s never going to happen. Since most people are exhausted after a late night Christmas Eve extravaganza, they might prepare their lasagna the day before. That is just what my sister Lisa would do - set up her lasagna with chopped meat sauce on Christmas Eve and bake it on Christmas Day.

You might say that as there are many variations for Christmas dinner, there are also variations of lasagna. Last month, my cousin Santo invited us over and made a preview holiday dinner with a decadent lasagna that had crumbled meatballs in between the layers! My brother-in-law’s dad, Leon Kaplan, who happened to be an excellent cook, used to make dozens of mini-meatballs to add to his lasagna. My friend Anna’s dad makes his sauce with mini-meatballs and layers his lasagna with mortadella! My cousin Emilia makes individual lasagna rolls which are very easy to serve and avoid all the filling running out. And my friend Vito reports to me that his lasagna, also made with a chopped meat sauce from his mama’s recipe, is so colossal that it doesn’t fit on his table and has to be served from a side table.

This will be our first Christmas without our dear mom, the person who was the center of our family, who gave us time-honored traditions and values, who turned out a holiday beyond compare and who taught all of her children how to cook. In the last couple of days, we’ve already made her struffoli, shredded the baccala for the fritters and my brother has made a masterpiece of a seafood salad. We certainly turn to food to help heal our broken hearts so in her memory, maybe I will make a nice lasagna, if not for Christmas, then perhaps for New Year’s Day.

I hope no matter what you are eating on Christmas Day, that you share it with those you love most in the world and that you hold on tight to your memories. Merry Christmas, Buon Natale and Buon Appetito to all!