Christmas Dinner

What is it about food and holidays? Why is it still such an important part of our celebrations?

I understand in the old days having enough food to invite all your friends over and feed them enormous quantities was a sign of your wealth and success. Sometimes just surviving the winter was a sign of your success.

I understand certain festivities involving food had practical reasons. For example, the pancakes of Shrove Tuesday used up the eggs and milk that you weren't going to be able to use for the next 40 days of Lent. And certain feasts probably used up food that was not going to last the season.

But is that really applicable any longer? I mean we have gigantic grocery stores with huge aisles of preserved food. There is no worry that I will make it through the winter. And yet here I am, ten days before the big day, going through my cookbooks and deciding that I'm going to spend the entire day baking cookies.

Now I do love baking and I do find it relaxing and zen-like, but I could achieve the same effect by baking a couple of dozen of them rather than several dozen in six or seven varieties. Perhaps we need Tevye to walk through the room singing Tradition.

Whatever it is, we celebrate it with food. When I received the first copy of my first book, I planned a party. I invited everyone I had met, practically, and most of them came! And we spent the morning chopping and dicing and mixing and arranging. And that was just me. My friend the brilliant cook also pitched in. We had my entire dining room table laden with food (it groaned - but that's such a cliche that nobody will believe it), the coffee tables in the living room, the kitchen island, and the desk and coffee tables in the office. And whatever the historical reason that I was genetically programmed to provide that much food, it was a great party and we ate leftovers for days!

So no I'm off to make further food and try and figure out who I should give it away too. I mean, you can't fight your DNA, right?

Plus cookies are great to nibble on while you're writing. But then there is the other author's dilemma - how many calories do you burn an hour typing????