When Jaeger and I got married we decided to alternate which parents we’d spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with. One year we’d visit Jaeger’s parents for Thanksgiving and mine for Christmas and then the next year we’d have Thanksgving with my parents and Christmas with Jaeger’s. Because of this, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been responsible for preparing a holiday meal. Christmas this year was one such exception. Initially, Jaeger only got Christmas, not Christmas Eve, as a paid holiday. However, he got both New Years Eve and New Years Day as a paid holidays. To maximize his vacation time, we decided to get together with my parents the week after Christmas¹.

My Family’s Holiday Meals

Growing up Adventist vegetarian², we didn’t have a consistent main entree. I recall various options such as Baked Fri-Chik (one of my favorites) and Cottage Cheese Loaf. A couple of years my mom made a Roasted Vegetable Platter which I particularly liked³. I also remember at least once mom made some sort of soy loaf in the shape of a turkey. I don’t remember anything about how it tasted other than it was impressive looking and a lot of work.

While the entree wasn’t consistent, there were some sides that regularly showed up. We always had a relish tray that usually had carrots, red peppers, black olives, and pickles (dill and sweet). While mom generally preferred dill pickles, the one sweet pickles she would eat were the ones her mom made⁴. We also always had Potato Refrigerator Rolls. The other common sides were Candied Sweet Potatoes⁵, Five-cup Salad, and Cranberry Salad. We usually had mashed potatoes and gravy but I recall the gravy wasn’t considered particularly important. For desert we’d sometimes have apple pie but as we got older we often just had Christmas Candy instead.

Jaeger’s Family’s Holiday Meals

Jaeger also grew up vegetarian but I feel the meals tended to be a bit more standardized than my mom’s. One common entree was Christmas Pecan Loaf with cranberry sauce⁶. They also always had mashed potatoes with gravy as well as Apricot-Orange Gel⁷. Another common side was sweet potatoes with coconut and orange juice⁸. Pumpkin Pie was a common Thanksgiving dessert and Persimmon Pudding was for Christmas.

In addition to Christmas/Thanksgiving, there are two other traditional meals at this time of year. On Christmas Eve Jaeger’s family has Cheese Fondue and on New Year’s Eve they have Chocolate Fondue. This is a tradition that I have enthusiastically embraced.

Christmas This Year

This year we had Thanksgiving with Jaeger’s parents and he was able to eat most of their traditional holiday dishes. When deciding on dishes for Christmas this year, I tried to mix in a bit of my family’s traditional food with some experiments thrown in for fun. Per Jaeger’s family’s style, on Christmas day we only had two meals: brunch around 10am and dinner around 4pm.

Christmas Eve Supper

• Sicilian Lentil Soup with Pasta – We actually had this as very late lunch/supper appetizer. We had eaten a late breakfast so I made up a pot of lentil soup as a meal between the late breakfast and fondue to try to add a little healthy food to the day.
• Cheese Fondue

Christmas Brunch

• Masala Chai
• Freshly squeezed orange and pomegranate juice
• Earl Grey Cardamom Buns – Most people I make my family’s Sweet Rolls/Sticky Buns for love them. However, it turns out that my own children do not. These Cardamom Buns are a nice compromise that the whole family enjoys. Though, next time I think I’ll use my mom’s dough and this recipe’s filling and syrup.
• Persimmon Pomegranate Fruit Salad – This is a beautiful seasonal fruit salad. Persimmons are in season here in Santa Cruz and I think pomegranates just ended. The lemon in the recipe came from our lemon tree and the apple came from our CSA. The mint was also local, I picked it from our pot. However, I didn’t particularly like the mint in the salad and will probably leave it out next time.
• Cheese Souffle – I do not like the taste of egg. However, the rest of my family is less egg adverse so I made it for them. Jaeger definitely liked it and Julian didn’t hate it.
• Potato Rosti – I used too much butter (didn’t measure properly) and it didn’t turn out as pretty as the picture in the recipe. However, this still tasted good. I did serve this with ketchup because I like ketchup with potatoes

Christmas Dinner

• Veggie Lentil Wellington – This was an experiment and it turned out very well. Because we’re not vegan, I did substitute the flaxseed and water for an egg. I also left out the chestnuts, because I knew Julian wouldn’t like them, and pureed the vegetables to make them disappear more. To save time, I used Trader Joe’s Steamed Lentils (in the produce section). My one gripe with this recipe is it doesn’t specify how much salt to use. I used 1/2 tsp which seemed about right. Also, this recipe must be served with gravy of some sort or it will be too dry.
• Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes – I didn’t pay enough attention to this recipe and didn’t end up with enough time to roast the garlic. However, the flavor was still good. That said, 2 lbs of potatoes made less mashed potato than I was expecting. There was enough for the four of us but we had to stick to a moderate serving size.
• Gravy – Since I don’t like mushrooms, and neither do the kids, I left them out and sauteed onions instead. For Jaeger’s sake, I sauteed up some mushrooms on the side so he could add them back in.
• Quick Glazed Carrots from How to Cook Everything – they were fine
• Potato Refrigerator Rolls – Next time I need to remember to make the rolls larger. I think I was taking “walnut-sized” too literally, the balls definitely should be larger.
• Broccoli – So there would be a vegetable I knew Julian would eat
• Pigs in a Blanket – When I asked what people wanted for Christmas, Julian was the only person who spoke up and he said he wanted vegetarian hot dogs. I did not want to have hot dogs for Christmas dinner so I compromised on vegetarian Pigs in a Blanket. Julian enjoyed them.
• Five-cup Salad – Since no one was expressing preferences, I decided I could bring back a nostalgia item from my family’s meals. I’m quite sure Julian has never had this and he was delightedly incredulous that this was considered a salad rather than a dessert. Jaeger was scandalized, associating this with a fair number of dubious 80s food inventions. However, I looked it up and it appears the first variations (Ambrosia salad) may have been created in the late 1800s. My mom always made this with Cool Whip but I used regular whipped cream and it turned out fine. The marshmallows were a trickier issue. I looked in five grocery stores for the vegan mini-marshmallows and several of the stories normally stocked them but were out. Eventually, I cut the larger marshhmallows into 6 pieces each and dusted them with powdered sugar to keep them from sticking together.
• Raw Beet Salad – This was probably the least popular dish on the table. The main reason I added it was because we had CSA beets that needed to be used up. However, my family might have liked them better if I had roasted them instead of making them into a salad. The salad tasted fine, just not to my family’s taste.
• Sparkling Apple-Grape – I feel like Martinelli’s is the official fancy Adventist drink. However, they’re also based less than 30 minutes away from us so it feels especially appropriate
• Peppermint Chocolate Ice Cream Pie – Calvin in particular is sad to no longer get snow in winter so I felt a cold dessert would be appropriate. Unfortunately, I could not find peppermint ice cream anywhere so ended up making the peppermint ice cream⁹ from scratch.

Footnotes