One Body - Many Breads

     Holy Mother Church is universal. Catholics come in all ages, races, and from all of the world's countries. This Christmas season, many of the world's Catholics will sit down to a traditional meal to celebrate the birth of Christ.

     A traditional meal of what? As Catholics, we share a common bread in the most holy sacrament of the altar. We celebrate our joyful holiday with many breads, foods, and traditions generic to our country or ethnic subculture. Sometime during this happy holiday season, why not sit down with your family to enjoy a traditional Christmas dish from a culture foreign to your own. Celebrate and savor the delicious taste of the diversity which combines in our one holy, catholic, and apostolic faith.

     For our Christmas meal, we have selected oplatek, wassail, tamales, boiled custard, cauliflower relish, Obe Didin with Moi Moi, sweet potatoes, makara, and chrusciki.

     In South Texas and in part of Mexico, families come together for the tamalada, a community or family get-together to make delicious tamales in large quantities for Christmas eating and sharing. Everyone takes part, even the children. A hog is butchered and the meat cooked as filling for the tamales. Chorizo (Mexican sausage), and chicharrones (fried pork skins) are also prepared. Wet masa (corn treated with lye and then ground) is patted carefully into damp cornshucks; the meat filling is added; the tamales are rolled and steamed in a large pot. Dozens and dozens of the delicious treats are made.

     Fred Goporo won't miss a traditional Christmas dinner. Back home in Bangui, Central African Republic, there is no such thing as Christmas dinner. At least there is no traditional food celebration on Christmas day itself. The celebration is on Christmas Eve. In this part of Africa, Christmas festivities are mainly for children. Christmas Eve, the children of the neighborhood gather in one of the homes for tea. The children have eaten a large meal at noon, and the evening celebration has no meat or cheese dishes. This is the one night of the year the children may eat as many sweets as they like. Tea, served hot with milk and sugar, a fruit samba (punch), makaras (various types of small cakes), and bon bons (candy) are served. Fred has happy memories of past Christmases spent with his five brothers and sisters and numerous cousins. In additon to feasting on sweets, the children gather around the Christmas crib which is usually placed near their Christmas tree, to sing hymns and songs in French and Sango, their native dialect. At last, having stayed up late, the children hop in bed to sleep and wait for Saint Nicholas to put presents under their pillows, or at the head of their beds.

     Juliana Tubi, also from Africa, remebers the large Christmas dinners traditional in her country, Nigeria. A native of Lagos , Juliana now lives in Maryland. Juliana remembers the delicious odors of Obe Didin (roasted goat), Efo Riro (vegetables), Moi Moi, fried plantains, and Jollof (rice ) which her family ate on Christmas day. Their celebration began on Christmas Eve and continued non-stop to Boxing Day on the 26th. The children played morning to night. After midnight Mass, the people threw biscos (firecrackers) into the air, shouting, singing, dancing and wishing each other a Happy Christmas. People dressed in special outfits and fancy masks. Children were taken to local department stores to see Father Christmas, although the practice of gift giving was not as common as it is here. Adults presented each other with gifts of food, and sometimes the children received a little money in an envelope.

     Mary Podkulski Bednarz of Buffalo, New York, was a second generation Polish - American. The oldest of ten children, Mary remembered the Christmases of her childhood with real candles on the family Christmas tree. Best of all, she says, was helping her mother prepare the traditional cakes and cookies for the Christmas feast. Mary's mother was such a good cook that her steelworker father gave up his job and opened a combination restaurant and tavern that is still a family venture in Buffalo today. Mary's favorite of the many Christmas pastries were the Chrusciki, or Angel Wings.

     Another favorite from Eastern Europe is the Christmas wafer, Oplatek. This thin bread, richly embossed with a Christmas scene, is broken by the elder as the family gathers on Christmas Eve. Polish, Slovak and Lithuanian homes are decorated with multi-colored paper garlands and freshly cut evergreens. Earlier, a sheaf of grain is placed in a corner of the room to represent the home's Guardian Angel. The family table is adorned as a symbolic manger of Bethlehem. After a brief prayer, the family members embrace and wish each other messages of love, health, happiness and peace as they share the Oplatek. The wafer is sent to absent family members and close friends who in their seperation eat it as a sign of unity with their loved ones at home. The family then begins their Christmas Vigil Feast. An empty place is set in memoriam of Christ and the family ancestors. As each of the odd numbered courses is served, a small portion is set aside for the animals, whose ancestors were the eyewitnesses to the birth of Our Lord.

     The traditional American Christmas meal is English in origin, although the English "Christmas bird," usually goose or capon, was supplanted by turkey and cranberry sauce. Traditionally the English also served plum pudding and mince pie. Before the Reformation, in honor of the Saviour's humble birth, mince pies were made in oblong form to represent the manger, and a little figure of the Christ child was placed on top. This custom was suppressed by the Puritans in the seventeenth century; our American mince pies are round.

     A traditional Christmas drink, particular to the English, was the wassail, always served in a large bowl. Its name is an Old Saxon word, a drinker's greeting: Was haile (your health.) From this custom came the word "wassailing," which denotes any kind of Christmas revel accompanied by drinking.

     My own family's Christmas dinner consisted of turkey and dressing, ham, sweet potatoes, numerous vegetable dishes, hot yeast rolls, relishes, boiled custard and mince pie,among other deserts. This meal was never eaten by a single family; rather, it was the time when all the aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins shared a common meal. There were so many of us that special tables were set for the children, as all could not fit at the large table reserved for the adults. The wonderful smells of the food tantalized us children, who were forbidden to taste anything until our Uncle Gus began our celebration by reading the Christmas story from the family Bible. My sister Julie swears that Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without the boiled custard, usually made by my cousin Margaret. As for myself, the hot yeasty rolls and many relishes were the highlights of my Christmas meal. •