From: altar@beaufort.sfu.ca (Ted Wayn Altar)
Subject: The Meanings of Xmas Pudding
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 20:24:13 GMT


    Now, what why do we eat this sickly sweet thing call
Christmas Pudding?  Taste preferences are not "absolutes", yet we
treat them as if they were and our habitual foods takes on
extended meanings and associations that partly helps to explain
the sometimes remarkable resistance people display when more
rational considerations demand that they change their accustomed
eating habits.  Even something as simple as Christmas pudding
carries all kinds of associations in people's minds.

Consider the passage below, which is taken from:

    Margaret Visser.   THE RITUALS OF DINNER: THE ORIGINS,
    EVOLUTION, ECCENTRICITIES, AND MEANING OF TABLE MANNERS,
    1991, Penguin Bks

Professor Visser is a cultural historian who teaches Classics at
York University in Toronto, Canada.  Her book is well worth
reading, especially if we are to better understand our Western
culture's prejudices and resistance towards vegetarianism.

                                Happy Vegetarian Holiday  ;-)

                                           ted


    Food is tradition, largely because a taste acquired is rarely
    lost; the tastes and smells which we have known in the past
    recall for us, as nothing else can, the memories associated
    with them.
    . . .
    Feasts, by means of structure and ritual, deliberately use
    the powerful connotation of food to recall origins and
    earlier times.  They also attempt to be events in themselves
    unforgettable, in order to furnish recollections for the
    future.  The food served at festivals is, therefore, not only
    richer and more splendid than what we usually eat, but also
    traditional, inherited from the past and intended to be
    experienced as ancient custom; the recipes and the lore
    associated with it are to be handed on by us for use again in
    ritual celebrations.  Festive food is both out of the
    ordinary, and (if the festival is a recurring one) always the
    same.  English Christmas pudding and brandy-soaked Christmas
    cake is heavy, sweet, and rich: it is eaten in the depth of
    winter when we can permit ourselves dense food that "sticks
    to our ribs."   Even then, in the context of the season's
    feasting, a tiny bit suffices: once we have recovered from
    Christmas, we are quite happy to wait a year before trying
    the cake and pudding again.  Dried fruit mixes require long
    hard work in the making and "maturing" of them: time taken in
    the preparation of festival foods is part of the value
    attributed to them, and focuses attention upon that value.
    There is a tendency, also, to associated very dark food, such
    as coffee, chocolate, truffles, caviar, and `crepes`, as well
    as plum cake, with excitement and luxury.  We feel obscurely
    that such strange dark stuff must be meaningful and ancient.
    (Fruit puddings and cakes do have very old roots, but the
    modern forms of them are quite recent ritual adaptations.)
    We are eating cultural history and value as well as family
    memories.  [p. 29-30]