Christmas Meal Traditions and Memories

As a German in Canada, I often get asked about our traditional German Christmas Meal.

I have to add that I am the daughter of a Turkish mother and an Austrian father and both decided in their early twenties to move and live in Germany. So our cultural traditions were always very influenced by these three countries. When I was a child no one of my Turkish relatives would have celebrated Christmas. Today things have changed and I see that my cousins in Turkey love to set up a Christmas tree, celebrate and feast in big crowds of family and friends. The social aspect in Turkey is just so different than in any other country I have been so far. They love to spend time with other peoples, cook and eat together. Miss these times in Turkey with my family and friends!

I always get carried away when I talk about my memories of Turkey....

Back to the Christmas Meal!
While my parents decided to cook simply our favorite meal for Christmas Eve, a lot of my friend's families had the tradition of a very sparse meal for Christmas Eve. Our favorite was Schnitzel with fries, many different kinds of colorful salads, and a Blackforest Creme as dessert.

If you ask a German what their traditional Christmas meal is

the answer would probably be sausages with potato salad. Doesn't sound like a big feast, right?!

This "poor people" meal is probably a remaining tradition from older times where the Advent period was considered a time of Lent and the last day of fasting was the 24th of December. In remembrance of the poverty of Mary and Joseph on the night of Christ's birth, barren food was offered on Christmas Eve. The bigger feast would follow on the first Christmas day.

Nevertheless, there are many different geological areas with cultural traditions influenced by their own history of that region.

So there is no one traditional Christmas Meal but typically one of these would be served:

• Fish, e.g. Carp, which is classically cut into pieces, breaded and fried in fat. There are potato salad or potatoes and cucumber salad. The Christmas Carp also comes from the Advent fasting tradition.
• Raclette, actually a Swiss national dish, in which a cheese loaf is melted by the fire. The melted cheese is then scraped from the loaf to the plate and eaten with potatoes and other side dishes. Nowadays, there are raclette grills, where you bake different ingredients covered with a layer of cheese in small pans.
• Fondue, also a true Swiss tradition, in which you either heat cheese or broth in a pot and then either dip bread and potatoes into the cheese or cook meat and fish in the broth.
• Poultry, e.g. The classic goose is popular in many German households and eaten not only at St. Martin, but also like on Christmas Day. The Christmas goose, but also duck or turkey are usually served with dumplings and red cabbage.

My sisters family traditional Christmas Meal is Raclette. Due to the length of a raclette meal, my own family and I decided to have this as our traditional meal on New Year's Eve. That way, we would have more time to enjoy the Raclette because usually, our kids can get very annoying when it comes to delays in opening their Christmas gifts.

In Germany, gifts are traditionally opened on Christmas Eve

and since we moved to Canada we literally struggle every year to find the perfect solution between German and Canadian traditions in terms of opening gifts. Usually, we would have split presents between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

In regards to our meal for Christmas Eve

it has changed so far every year, but mostly I have done something like a roast with red cabbage and dumplings. For this year we decided to have a "poor people" meal on Christmas Eve and the roast with cabbage and dumplings on Christmas Day.

M e r r y  C h r i s t m a s !