Is it 'Merry' Christmas or 'Happy' Christmas?

Though Christmas spreads in foreign books speak of mince pies, turkey with trimmings, gravy, pigs in blankets, pumpkin pie and gingerbread cookies, different parts of India go with their own festive menu. Plum cake with rum-soaked raisins and mulled wine are a given across the land. Seafood and red meat rule the roost, with marzipan, eggnog and chocolates making an appearance. Pies and prawn pulao till the eye can see…

A Christmas feast means a lot of cooking and baking has to get done. There is sorpotel, pork assado, bebinca, dobol, baath and kulkuls in Goa; Kerala serves appam and non-veg ishtew for breakfast, roast duck for lunch and rose cookies for tea. The best part about all the feasting are the leftovers. Till the middle of next month, you have sandwich fillings, icing to bite into, and some suspicious yellow thing at the back of the fridge no one knows is what.

The mass-produced plum cake wrapped in transparent plastic with the manufacturer’s name in large font across it is stocked up in plenty in the hope that someone somewhere will want to eat it. We fear running out of plum cake before the festival and end up having plum cake for breakfast, lunch, dinner for a long, long time after Christmas.

With traditional recipes and time-consuming culinary methods no longer the rage inside domestic kitchens, we are up on what to eat but not on how to make it. No wonder then people just order in or go out. This is the day we wait with bated breath for a relative, a friend, anyone to invite us for lunch! Depending on who hates their in-laws less, couples decide to visit husband’s family or wife’s. Grimly the family steps out carrying a gift dumped on them that they can’t wait to dump on another.