It’s not just about the food. It’s about who gets to cook it, and who gets to share it, at this special time of year when a hearty meal is the symbol of families brought together in love and celebration
As a child growing up in the Eastern Cape, Christmas was all about new clothes and going from house to house, asking for treats,as children do on Halloween. We would get sweets, home baked bread, and money, which we used to buy more sweets.
The highlight, though, was new clothes. Each home in the village had an abundance of bread and Oro Crush juice. When I arrived in Cape Town in 1999, I experienced a shift in Christmas culture and tradition. I was 17 years old at the time.
We still had new clothes, but the highlight of the day was food. I first experienced a proper Christmas family lunch at a friend’s house. They went all out and cooked the “seven colours”, a meal which consists of starch, different types of vegetables, beetroot, and potato salad. This was exciting for me.
At home, we didn’t make a big deal out of Christmas, until I became an adult. As we grew older, we started valuing Christmas as it was the only time we could all be together.
When we began our own Christmas tradition as adult children, it became a bonding time for my siblings and I. At the heart of this joyfulness was a hearty meal, cooked by my sister, who played the role of head chef until I learned how to properly cook.
My brother also had his fair share of cooking us Christmas lunches. When I had some time off varsity and lived with my brother briefly, he cooked all the time. He would go to work and come back and cook.
This made me happy. “Wow,” I thought, “my brother is not affected by patriarchy that says men don’t cook, let alone cooking for women”. What I didn’t know was that my brother cooked because he felt my cooking was not up to standard.
It was not until I started working that I learned to cook for myself and other people. As the youngest of three, I had the privilege of observing my sister cook us a family meal with great delight. She was a silent cooker, while I’m a noisy cooker, telling everyone that I’m cooking the best meal ever.
I also taste my food regularly, to my mom’s disapproval. She worries that by the time I finish cooking, there won’t be anything left to dish up. To her, I do not just taste, but I’m literally eating.
Once I learned how to cook, my sister silently retired from cooking Christmas lunch. Now it has become my great delight to cook my family a Christmas lunch each year. I’m slightly different from my sister, in that I don’t usually cook the traditional meals we all grew up eating.
I use modern dishes, such as pasta to make salads instead of the usual potato salad. My mom is old-school and doesn’t eat a lot of modern foods. Her favourite salad is potato salad and beetroot, and I still make those for her.
Our family traditional meal consists of rice with curry powder, changing its colour into yellow and we add frozen mixed veggies into it, fried chicken, potato salad, carrot, red cabbage and mayonnaise or beetroot.
With the help of the Internet, I’m able to revive traditional dishes, filling the house with delicious aroma. I sometimes exchange a cooked meal for a braai, with potato salad tagging along.
While I’m not skilled at braaing meat on the fire, I am greatly skilled at choosing the best spices and mixing them together, and picking a good marinade for the meat. I have inherited my mom’s love for beetroot. Even when I cook for myself, beetroot completes my dish.
Every other year, my family goes to the Eastern Cape and this means I need find other families to spend Christmas day with. This is usually in the home of friends and their friends. The highlight is still a hearty meal, among people who love me.
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