The holidays are upon us! High-resolution picture-perfect feasts are depicted on covers of glossy magazines, catalogs, and in our inboxes.
By now, many of us are well into planning our Christmas meals, from menus to tabletops. For the first time in several years, I’m hosting Christmas dinner at my home in Dallas, with my children and their significant others joining us. I, too, have already planned the menus.
As I count the many blessings in my life, the ability to afford high-quality food is up there. I’m grateful to serve my family’s traditional Christmas Day beef tenderloin. I’ve never been a turkey-for-Christmas gal. Not much for ham, either.
I took a poll of my 2,000+ Instagram followers on what they traditionally serve for Christmas dinner.
Seventy-five percent of respondents serve beef on Christmas day, prepared as tenderloin, roast beef, rib roast, or even beef bourguignon.
It’s no wonder Kuby’s sells about 5,000 pounds of tenderloin during the holidays. The next most popular dish is turkey, followed by ham, venison, rack of lamb, and poached whole fish. One friend’s tradition is fried chicken on Christmas.
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That made me think about Mary and Joseph. I wondered what they ate when they were preparing for the birth of Jesus. Just what was Mary setting the table for? I mean, besides the obvious.
Food historians hypothesize that diets around 6 BC, the time most scholars believe Jesus was born, contained lentil stews, sheep or goats’ milk cheese, olives, figs, bread, and dried dates and pomegranates. With Mary and Joseph being on the road and no Yeti thermos for the stew, they probably stuck to the shelf stable ingredients.
From its deeply humble beginnings, Christmas dinner has evolved. For some Americans, it’s a lavish spread fit for royalty.
For others, it’s quite humble.
Each year, Meals on Wheels delivers around 5,000 Christmas dinners to homebound seniors in Dallas County. Those meals feature turkey breast with gravy, garlic whipped mashed potatoes, green beans, ambrosia pudding, a dinner roll, and milk.
The Salvation Army’s food pantry provides food bundles to more than 200 families who get dry goods such as canned beans, fruit, and vegetables, plus rice, and a produce box with whatever the food bank has to offer, perhaps sweet potatoes, spinach, or lettuce. If it’s available, the pantry also provides proteins such as chicken, eggs, and milk. These bundles are distributed on Wednesdays and Fridays through the mobile food bank or drive-up.
Food pantry recipients and Meals on Wheels clients’ Christmas dinners look vastly different from yours or mine, or Mary and Joseph’s.
At least 20% of Dallas County residents are food insecure and that number increases daily. That’s a painful reality every day, but it hits particularly hard during the holidays.
It’s a privilege to dine well. It shouldn’t be a privilege to simply eat or have access to food.
As Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, God bless us, everyone. Especially, I’ll add, the poor and hungry and those who help them.
Kersten Rettig, a freelance writer with leadership experience in the food and travel industries, resides in the Park Cities, where she is known as “the restaurant sherpa” for her expert recommendations. Follow her on Instagram @KerstenEats.
