I saw Santa Clause once. He didn’t come down the chimney, he rang the doorbell and walked in, acknowledging every face as he passed, calling all the children by their names. Then, someone got him a chair, red velvet cushion and brown wood, and he sat, the fur stacking in folds behind his back. It was Christmas Eve and I was eight years old.
I met Santa that night in Dillon, South Carolina at Mima’s, my dad’s mother. I wondered how he found us there on George Washington Ave., how he knew what time we’d finish dinner and start opening presents and most of all, if he’d stay long enough to eat dessert.
Dillon, where my dad grew up and where his relatives mostly still reside, lodges itself in my memories and sets up camp. There is a warmness I feel when I think of it as a place in the world, compare it to everywhere else I’ve been and attached recollections to. Dillon is a town, but I think of it as Mima’s house, adoration dwelling inside the oak walls, tenderness seeping out in waves from the space heater.
Eventually, I got old enough to realize I was getting older and that Santa Clause had just been my uncle in red. My memories began to change shape. Instead of deriving comfort from Christmas surprises, I began to find beauty in the tradition of holiday food: familiar smells wafting about the kitchen, the assurance that whatever was beneath the lid of a corning ware dish was recognizable and exciting.
My dad’s mother, Mima, is the kind of Christmas cook that lines the countertops with food. She starts cooking the night before, and doesn’t stop cooking until we are all standing in the kitchen, holding hands, saying a dinner prayer. Christmas Eve at her house is a slow, twangy night, a country Christmas, like the kind of celebration Alabama sings about. Appetizers circle the kitchen table, fruit salad in small ceramic bowls, a cheese ball and crackers. We stand around the table in semi-circles and talk about the food we’re eating, we talk about what’s changed since last Christmas, we hug each other and eat almonds by the handful.
There is a dish we eat once a year at Christmas, Chicken Bog, that I try to recreate every now and then, but can’t seem to get just right. It is essentially: chicken, rice and Italian sausage, but there is a hidden quality to it that I’ve yet to master. The taste is just as smoky and wooden as the smell, all the flavors marrying each other, as they should in a mixture. But the remarkable element of “the bog” is how garishly the flavors represent themselves: the spice and the grain and the smoke.
At Mima’s house, we eat on paper plates and use solo cups and at 23, I still assume my place at the “kid’s table”. My dad’s side of the family is not a group of people who mind if the components of the meal touch, we let mushroom gravy from our stuffing run like rainwater into butter beans, and sift into the bottom of our biscuits. We loop “Blue Christmas” by Elvis on cassette and keep dessert in the laundry room on top of the washer and dryer until we’re hungry for it. And, after dessert, bellies full of all the food we may not see again until next Christmas Eve, we sit around the tree and exchange presents.
My mom’s parents lived in my hometown of Lumberton, NC. My Nana was a school teacher and my Grandaddy was a school principal. They have been dead thirteen years and ten years, respectively.
After ten years of Christmas without both of them, I surprise myself with the sadness I feel when I don’t see them side-by-side, baking crescent rolls. And though it is mostly unspoken, we are all trying to call them back to memory when we remove the “good china” from the curio cabinet, sit to bless the food.
The relationship my grandparents had with food has carried over to my mother, and to me. We eat the flavors we like, we don’t experiment as much as we could and we are simple. We are butter bean people and we are casserole people.
On Christmas Day, my Nana and Granddaddy found their joy in watching our eyes grow two sizes when unwrapping their gifts: one Christmas, a set of navy blue suitcases, another Christmas, a beanbag with our names across the side. But, lunch was never a surprise; the green bean casserole was always embellished with french-fried onions and the pecan pie was warm for dessert. Every Christmas Day, we had just the same meal. It was a constant we were pleased to profess.
We started having Christmas dinner at my house, and though the location changed, it was the only thing that did. My mother devils eggs, using Nana’s recipe, mashed yokes and Miracle Whip, and circles them up, a piece of lettuce placed as decoration in the middle. My Uncle Bill, her brother, sometimes brings deer hash, which may not be a delicacy anywhere besides our house. We serve it over rice, the vinegary, salty dark gravy of it coating everything on the plate in its color.
What I cherish though is not the casseroles, the homemade banana pudding, the honey ham. When I think of Christmas Day spent with my mother’s parents, it is the sausage balls I remember most. I see my Nana in the kitchen sitting at the table with a red Tupperware bowl filled with a doughy blend of sausage, cheddar cheese and Bisquick. She is forming small spheres with her hands and placing them equidistant from one another on a cookie sheet covered with Saran wrap. Every one of them is the same size. When she removes them from the oven, they are not burnt or undercooked, and the whole house smells crisp, like a bakery. She lets them cool, and when they do, she piles them, one onto another in a tin illustrated with snowmen and garland, and closes the lid. When we come over for lunch, they are still warm.
Every year since my grandparents died, we enjoy Christmas for the same reasons as the year before. We eat on their dishes, we use their recipes. We do this, not to try and resurrect them, but because, how else should we celebrate, if not by making ourselves happy?
Recently, North Country Public Radio, based out of Canton, New York, asked families to write in and share food traditions and recipes. Listeners responded, sharing stories of weekly spaghetti nights and birthday waffles. Lyn Burkett, of Potsdam, NY explains her tradition of a “cookie exchange”: a get-together that originated simply due to a love of sweets. She was in the 4th grade. She explains, “My mother helped me make a guest list (I think I invited 8 girls), and each guest was instructed to bring a shoebox with enough of her favorite cookies to share with each guest, as well as 9 copies of the recipe for her cookies.” Thirty years later, she states, the tradition continues.
“We all sample the cookies and enjoy a few other snacks, and everyone introduces themselves and their cookies ... some cookies are old family favorites, some come from particular ethnic traditions, and some are from newer recipes,” Burkett writes.
And now, after her mother’s death in 2006, the cookie exchange, she says, “has become a fond reminder of all the time the two of us spent in the kitchen baking during past Christmas seasons.”
We carry on food traditions for the same reasons we carry on any other tradition year after year: because it feels reverent and possible, and perhaps a little necessary. We do it because we miss people who aren’t there to stand beside us in front of the stove, but we can remember when they were. We do it because there is something so soothing about growing old beside a family member, letting the years pass by, but never forgetting how long to bake the squash casserole.
