Advent 13 - Food and Fellowship
By Amy Boucher Pye
Our first Christmas as a married couple, when I had only recently moved to England, I tried to replicate with my new husband what was happening with my family back in Minnesota. I had never missed a Christmas with them, but having married a minister, for whom Christmas was a working holiday, the expectation of a guaranteed snowy holiday evaporated.
My mother’s German roots inform our gatherings at Christmas, and like many Northern European families, our main celebration of the holiday occurs on Christmas Eve. Around four or five pm, we’d go to church, and after church we’d either dive into the presents or enjoy our dinner. That meal I tried to recreate our first year was the traditional (to me) homemade chicken noodle soup.
That first Christmas Eve, Nicholas and I were on our own. I had never before made the soup’s egg noodles. Instead of using the white flour my mom does, I substituted wholewheat. I also didn’t roll out the batter very thinly as I made loads of noodles. As I boiled up a chicken, I hoped for the best.
The soup was a disaster. The stock was more like hot water, without much flavour, as I had used only one chicken and had to keep adding more and more water to the broth as the noodles absorbed the liquid faster than I thought possible. The noodles turned out to be a clumpy mess of stodge, especially because of the wholewheat flour. After taking a spoonful I burst into tears. The frustration over my failed cooking attempt highlighted my deeper pain at not being with my family of origin. What, I wondered, had I done in coming to this country?
We called my American family to wish them a merry Christmas, and it wasn’t long before my tears took over and I squeaked out how sad I was to be in England and not in Minnesota with them. My dad, wise and gentle, said, “Amy, you longed to be married. Now you are, and your home is with Nicholas.” He gently but firmly helped me to follow the biblical injunction to leave and cleave.
That disastrous first batch of soup, and the poignancy of trying to create everything just like it was in Minnesota, changed the way we approached Christmas Eve in the years that followed. We kept the importance of Christmas Eve from my point of view but widened the celebrations to include people from the congregation to make the evening richer and more celebratory. At times, those invited may have wondered just why they were eating this strange soup on the night before Christmas, but their good cheer made the holiday joyous for me.
How about you? As you ponder meals and celebration during the Christmas season, I invite you to consider two questions:
If you have a favourite meal or celebration that you love during the Christmas season, what makes it special to you (the specific food, who is gathered, the repeated practices each year, etc)?
What traditions around food might you adapt or adopt this year to encourage communion, intimacy, and fellowship?
Amy Boucher Pye is a writer, speaker, and spiritual director. She’s the author of Still Finding Myself in Britain, from which this article is adapted with permission by the publisher.
Still Finding Myself In Britain
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