
The Evolution of a Christmas Antipasto
How changing holiday food traditions keep vibrant family cultures alive from generation to generation.
Are there any foods as rich with nostalgia as those eaten on or around Christmas? Marcel Proustās epic novel of personal remembrance, In Search of Lost Time, grew to over 3,000 pages following one characterās memory-unlocking bite of a madeleine tea cake; if heād tasted a bit of honeyed ham instead, I have to think the books would have been three times as long.
For me and my wife this year, the foods of the holiday have taken on the additional flavors of hope and anticipation. Thatās because for the first time ever, we will be hosting Christmas in our new house. It feels as though this is the moment for us to decisively take up the baton of our familiesā holiday eating traditions, which we adapt and alter to fit our own lives without always realizing how much weāve changed them.
For example: I still call the meal-before-the-meal antipasto, but I didnāt realize how different it was from the old-school Italian-American deal until recently. āYou know, this is a lot of work, isnāt it?ā my dad remarked last year, watching me arrange the antipasto at his house. He looked at two platters of perfectly arranged cold cuts, one plate of cheese, and bowls of every pickled and marinated thing Iād been able to get at Whole Foods and Wegmans. āWe used to throw it all in a bowl and then have dinner.ā
Itās true: My antipastos are more like charcuterie boardsāan old idea Iād updated to modern trends. When my dad observed this, he brought to mind an āantipasto saladā Iād ordered at an Italian restaurant once; it arrived looking like the contents of an Italian sub tossed on a platter. I thought this was some kind of inventive twist along the lines of a ādeconstructed sub.ā I had no idea it was actually an old Italian-American staple prepared in the classic fashion.
I wasnāt fully aware of how much Iād changed the concept of antipasto, but that doesnāt mean I didnāt have good reasons for doing so. For example, while I despise the unbecomingly bovine term āgrazing board,ā part of the point of an antipasto tray is that all the stuff can sit there and still be good a few hours later. Thereās nothing quite like a few stray slices of salami and cheese at 9 p.m. on a holiday evening. Even as an adultāeven as the hostāthat feeling that the rules have been loosened, and you can have as much dessert as you want and then follow it up with a second dinner, is wonderful.
Under my tenure, our holiday antipastos have evolved into full-on cold-cut meals, with the big dinner following at 5 or 6 p.m. instead of the traditional 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and this variation offers even more food for thought.
Two oāclock in the afternoon is certainly an odd time for a meal. My parents have always instinctively grokked why the holiday dinner was meant to be served at this awkward time; growing up, I more or less had no idea, and I still donāt get it. Each year, other confused people ask about it on Twitter. Maybe itās like jazz: If you have to ask, youāll never know. Itās fascinating how certain bits of culture are transmitted clearly, some are scrambled, and some are lost.
So why is the meal served at an odd time? My father says eating at an abnormal hour underscores that this is a special day. As a novice holiday meal host, I must also concede that it gives you some very welcome extra time to get ready for that second dinner; my parents always hosted, so perhaps that was one of their reasons, too. The unusual schedule benefits guests, as well, by allowing them time to head home the same evening without getting back at midnight or later. And the last part of the answer, beyond any reason of utility, is that itās a traditionāsimply what you do by virtue of being a member of your family or community.
Some of this accounting for holiday meal practices reflects my own preferences in food and logistics. Some of it is an attempt to reconstruct the holidays of my childhood from the vantage of my adulthood, through imperfect memories. (It certainly felt like there was a smorgasbord of dry-cured and marinated things very much distinct from the big dinner itself; my antipasto reconstructs a true vibe even if my dad would flag the result for fact-checkers.) And some of it is simply the result of looking at the old ways, not quite grasping them, and accepting that itās okay to change things up a little. In fact, thatās precisely what a living tradition entails.
Not everything survives the process of handing down from generation to generation. One aspect of those old Italian-American holidays in particular was lost in our family. In my parentsā childhoods, the main dinner featured lasagna, but by my childhood the meal had been Americanized, with only the antipasto remaining distinctly Italian. And even then, antipasto itself has become part of a much larger American cultural inheritance: where it was once considered an āethnicā food, it has become broadly popularāif youāll forgive my punāacross the board.
Christmas songs give hints of how our celebrations have changed in the passage from generation to generation, too. As our standard of living has increased, for example, so has the extent to which our Christmases surpass our ordinary days.
Bing Crosby wished for āpresents on the tree,ā a reference to an old custom of hanging little gifts that doubled as decorations. Today weād call them stocking stuffersāappetizers, antipastoābut for many people they were once the main event.
Our appetites have also grown. One classic Christmas song suggests turkey for the big dinner, and more than one mentions pumpkin pie.There certainly must have been holidays hams, prime ribs, and legs of lamb in the 1950s, but the only dinners recorded in the popular playlist are rehashes of Thanksgiving fare. (Frank Sinatra, to his great credit, suggests an unusual bird, pheasant, in one of his lesser-known Christmas songs.) And while appetizers, hors dāoeuvres, and variations on charcuterie boards didnāt spring unannounced into American culture in the 2010s, the antipasto spreads that were practically synonymous with holidays in my family must have been rather foreign to the non-Italian Americans.
Today, when I imagine a turkey for Christmas dinner, I think, āWe just had that!ā Of course, we actually had it one month ago, more than long enough for it to feel new again. But Americans are now affluent enough in the main to switch it up, and to feel entitled to something fancier.
Going beyond turkey for Christmas is not a single, contextless choice. The decision represents an entire collective thought process and approach to celebrations enabled by rising material fortunes. Thatās why I cringe when I hear that a late-arriving Honey Baked Ham āruinedā someoneās Christmas. More ambitious enjoyments give rise to higher and higher standards of enjoymentāeven to the point of snuffing out simple pleasures, which canāt bear the weight of our trumped-up expectations. Canāt anybody just be grateful for a simple meal with family anymore?
But I canāt lecture anyone. Iām buying my prime rib this week. If it doesnāt turn out, I hope my irritation will be tempered by my reliable antipasto, if not my spirit of gratitude.
A guest writer for my newsletter once captured an observation that is relevant to the passing down of holiday food traditions. The immediate context was a reflection on driving station wagons, which arenāt often made anymore. āThe interesting thing about driving a car from 30 years ago built to plans from 50 years ago,ā he wrote, āis that youāre inhabiting the very different assumptions made by a culture very similar to yours.ā
So it is with the subtly different Christmases of my parentsā era, or those described in the classic secular Christmas songs, which we reject, reconstruct, or riff on in the present. While the difference in cultural assumptions is what stands out at first glance, the deeper source of interest for me is in the last part of the sentence: āmade by a culture very similar to yours.ā Because for all the accretions of historical cultural change and the material conditions that give rise to it, there is still a sense of continuity and recognitionāa sense that our forebears had concerns and interests in their holiday traditions that are fundamentally consonant with our own.
Adaptation is a sign of life, after all. Modulating received practices to suit your own time, as I did unconsciously by spreading out my antipasto, transforms a fixed image of the past into a motion picture in which you and your loved ones can all play different roles. And that is a great gift for all of us. Merry Christmas.