Learning to give into festivities

A batch of lebkuchen, a special German cookie that is part of Christmas traditions. Pic/Rosalyn D’Mello

Since I moved to Tramin in South Tyrol in 2020, I have felt very little desire to actively participate in Christmas traditions. I've been more of a lurker, enjoying the festivities and the atmosphere without necessarily contributing in any way. In 2019, I baked more than 200 cookies for charity, but most of that process involved me in a restaurant kitchen working alone with occasional help. I left for India soon after dropping off the goodies to spend Christmas with my family in Goa. Since 2020, I have been here in my marital home every December. Part of the lure has been how un-stressful it is for me. My mother-in-law has very clear boundaries about what she likes to do and what doesn't bring her joy. She makes a fantastic stollen using her mother's recipe, but she doesn't like the intricacies of making cookies. Shaping things with her hands is not her idea of fun. Even last year, since she had been gifted stollen, she decided not to make it. I respect this aspect of her… this internal voice that tells her that she doesn't need to perform for anyone. Unlike at my family's table, the spread at my in-laws is not so elaborate. On Christmas eve we usually eat high-quality smoked salmon with freshly grated horse radish and bread. There's always excellent wine, but that's generally all there is. The first time I was pregnant, I had to bring my own food. I'll have to do it this time too. And yet, I wouldn't complain, because we generally sit around the table around 6 or 7 pm, eat well, then we listen to the brass band playing Christmas carols from atop the clock tower after which we open our gifts. Later, we eat cookies - usually gifted to my in-laws by relatives - and still later, drink a heady orange punch made with white wine, fresh oranges, and some rum.

The whole affair is so vastly different from my childhood and even adult Christmases with my family, where we planned our menu weeks in advance. My mother usually makes the sorpotel at least 10 days before so that it is completely rife with rich flavours by the time we place it on the table for Christmas lunch. My sister and I would make at least five kinds of salads and we often had three kinds of meats, including a mutton curry and a chicken dish (often cafreal), sometimes also prawns. As our family expanded, we had to shift the table to the centre of the room and bring in more chairs so we could all sit together. We rarely ate before 2 pm. We rarely left the table before 4.30 pm. The morning was generally frantic, spent mostly in the kitchen. And each year my sister and I endeavoured to prepare as much as we could in advance to reduce our anxiety levels on Christmas morning, which was also when we used to go over to the neighbours to offer the sweets we had been making the whole of December.

If there's one thing my family can legitimately boast - it's the quality of our Christmas sweets. My father makes dodol and guava cheese, and we always have kulkuls, neoris, marzipan, walnut fudge, milk cream and other delicacies which we make in-house. We would supplement with some store-bought goodies, like rose cookies from Kalina and jujubes. Since my move here, I have had to formulate a different notion of Advent in the absence of the scent of boiling guavas. Also, gestational diabetes prevents me from indulging in any of the incredible cookies one gets here. For the past few years, Christmas has felt like a non-event for me. It is a feast I am happy to celebrate, but I haven't felt compelled to over-invest my time to make it special. I soak in the atmosphere, but I don't put up a tree in our apartment. We maintain an Advent wreath with four candles, which we light each subsequent Sunday, but there's no crib other than the handmade two-dimensional terracotta one my in-laws gifted us. Also, given what is unfolding in the birthplace of Christ, the unending aggression and famine and death, it has felt hard to feel jubilant about this feast…

But this year, something has shifted for me. I don't know if it has to do with my recent hospitalisation or the fact that our toddler is of that age where Christmas trees and presents excite him, and he cannot wait to blow off candles, but for the first time since my move I feel like baking cookies and making sweets not just for our private consumption or for charity but to actively gift neighbours and acquaintances. I teared up a bit when I told my partner this last evening… I told him it was possibly a sign that I feel ‘at home' here, and that I value the network of relations that I have steadily built over the past four years. After my brush with a potential bodily collapse, I am learning to give in to certain festivities and do everything in my power to live joyfully and even boisterously.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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