What you get when you let an American cook your British Christmas Dinner

Cooking for a community charity outfit is challenging, exhausting, and frustrating along with being good fun and very rewarding. This past week, Christmas dinner was on the menu. British Christmas dinner, that is. (Or, shall I say English? Well, that's a debate for another time, I suppose). My fellow volunteer (a Slovakian) gazed wide-eyed at the array of dishes in process, asking for the recipes as she -- for the first time -- is to cook a Christmas dinner here in the UK. 'Hmmmmm. Well,' I said, 'I wouldn't trust what I I am doing to be the right way; you don't know what you'll get when you let an American cook your British Christmas dinner.' To this, another worker piped up in frustrated tones, 'but how is an American Christmas dinner any different?' To that I replied, 'I'm Sicilian and Polish, by origin,' (as if this explained everything). I went on to explain that while Thanksgiving dinner is rather like what many Brits eat for Christmas (turkey, stuffing, buttered vegetables), American Christmas dinner is nothing of the sort for most. Heavily influenced by people's roots and US regionalism, American Christmas dinner, is, well, whatever you eat on the 25th of December! Sure, there are food histories that detail what the fashion of the day was through time, and much of that (particularly on the East Coast of the US) is based on British heritage. However, this is simply one of range of influences that determine what people now eat in the US of A on Christmas Day.

In the snowy and cold North, my family (sans moi) will be sitting down to a dinner of lasagne, caponata (made, incidentally, by my Polish father!), Italian sausages cooked in Chianti, Italian cheeses and olive salads. Is this 'traditional' Italian, Sicilian, or even Sicilian-American? Probably not, but it is simply what we do. A breakfast of eggs and Polish sausages and possibly potato pancakes or dumplings will also be on the Christmas menu.

Around the US, people will be eating beef roasts, seafood, ham, venison, game birds -- you name it. Mexican tamales for some and lutefisk for others -- or quite possibly both dishes in the same household. Christmas dinner is a testament to the many, many heritages of the American people -- old and new, traditional and blended.

So, to my British friends and colleagues, I am sorry that I can't tell you what American Christmas dinner is -- or even what it isn't. (Never say never, as no doubt some in America will be eating a British Christmas dinner).

As for me, I will be sitting down to a tasty Christmas dinner in London prepared by my mother-in-law. Oh -- and so much for traditional turkey -- she makes beef.

Have a lovely Christmas, everyone.