Enjoy it! (Traditional Christmas dinner)

Member Name: susancarter

Product:	Traditional Christmas dinner
Date:	22/01/07 (550 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It is a celebratory meal.

Disadvantages: People can feel they have to match up to certain specific requirements.

What is a “traditional” Christmas dinner? Over the years the concept of the Christmas dinner has changed and it means many different things to different people.

To me a “traditional” Christmas dinner is what I have grown up with. It contains certain basic elements which make it Christmas dinner rather than just “dinner” but unlike the meals I read about in newspapers and magazines, it does not require much more effort than a normal dinner.

Turkey: Other people talk about the time involved in cooking a whole turkey and about eating turkey for what seems like weeks but growing up, we never did this. My mum would buy sufficient turkey breast for two meals (Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and would cook them in the oven wrapped in tin foil.

Sausage meat: I can’t imagine Christmas dinner without sausage meat and like the turkey, this is just cooked in the oven wrapped in tinfoil.

Potato: Depending on how many of us there were, we would have one or two types of potato. One would be boiled or mashed potato which is fairly quick and easy and the other would be something bought to be cooked in the oven such as potato croquettes or oven chips.

Veg: Usually boiled carrot and sprouts so again fairly simple.

Stuffing and gravy: These would usually be instant.

Pudding: Christmas pudding and white sauce. Our Christmas puddings were always made around the end of October. This is probably the most labour intensive job on Christmas Day purely due to the fact that it needs to be put on to steam a long time in advance of the meal. The white sauce is no more work to make than custard which is what we tended to have most other days anyway.

Crackers: No Christmas meal would have been complete without crackers and the resultant hats.

I know that to some people this might sound like a meagre Christmas meal but I can honestly say that I was always happy with it and as someone else recently pointed out, as we always had the same on Boxing Day, I effectively got TWO Christmas dinners a year.

This year, when I made my own Christmas dinner, it was almost the same except that I had goose breast and made roast potatoes using the goose fat. I enjoyed it just as much as the Christmas dinners I grew up with.

To be honest, I think that the most important part of Christmas dinner is that it is enjoyable. It doesn’t really matter whether you spend one hour or ten hours cooking it as long as you have enjoyed the preparation and the resultant meal. We can get too hung up on having to do things in a particular way but at the end of the day whatever you do is fine as long as you enjoy it as this is the point of a traditional Christmas dinner: to celebrate!

Summary: It doesn't matter exactly what you make or how you do it as long as you enjoy it.