Our Family's Christmas Table
Holiday Meals were unique blends of Old World and New
Armenian and Anglo Family Traditions and Foodways Made for Unique Holiday Menus.
When it comes to talking turkey, never was my Armenian grandmother more out of her element – and my Anglo-American grandmother more in hers. Lucky for us all that they got along quite well. Though my maternal grandmother’s cooking never really any extra spice or exotic seasonings, my paternal grandmother grew to love foods like turkey, jello salads, pumpkin pie and a pineapple upside down cake that, once learned, she began to make on every available occasion.
Even though we always had Turkey for Christmas dinner, my Armenian grandmother soon found ways to incorporate traditional touches of the Middle East into the quintessential American Christmas menu.
No Christmas dinner was complete without her own refrigerator pickles and small bowls of oil-cured, wrinkly black olives alongside tufted mounds of carefully shredded string cheese. A pilaf stuffing, studded with giblets, was preferred over the traditional bread variety, as well. On the table, there would also be lamajun and pida (a flatbread thicker than the pita found in the store today); sometimes some stray dolma leftover from the fall’s freezing; and – usually - thick rolls of paper candy and walnuts; and Aunt Rose’s famous "fish cookies," along with the pineapple upside down cake and the pumpkin pie.
William Saroyan once observed how, wherever they are planted following their vast global dispora, Armenians will sink in their roots and grow a "New Armenia." All you really have to do is take a look at their holiday tables to see that his observation is a true one.
