‘Tis the Season

This year, Bern’s Christmas season started on December 3, the first day of Advent. The official purpose of Advent is to celebrate the coming of Christ with four Sunday services before December 25, but since few Swiss attend church, it’s a time for feeling festive and getting a head start on baking the many sorts of Christmas cookies that most families are expecting. Parents make Advent calendars for their children containing tiny presents for each day before Christmas; people decorate their dining room tables with four large candles set in an evergreen wreath—one candle for each Advent Sunday. Then they try to remember to blow out the candles every evening before they leave the room so they don’t set the wreath on fire (as I did a decade ago—no more Advent wreaths in our house since then!)

When I first moved here, I wanted to hear about the typical Swiss Christmas dinner. My US family’s Christmas dinner took place on December 25, usually around three in the afternoon. The food wasn’t always the same, but it was always fancy, even if sometimes only my parents, my sister, and I were there. I remember shrimp cocktails served in stemmed glasses—a classic appetizer of the 1960s—sometimes followed by roast beef, with pecan pie or fruitcake (two of my favorites) for dessert.

In Switzerland, the morning of December 25 is not when presents are opened; instead, the all-important time is Christmas Eve, even though December 24 is a work day. On that evening, a hidden tree is hastily brought into the living room and decorated with live candles by one parent while the other makes sure the children are out of the way. The tree and gifts are revealed to the children later as a surprise; a meal is prepared, and guests may arrive. When all is ready, the candles on the tree are lit, and the presents are opened.

When I ask Swiss adults what they ate as kids on the day they opened their presents, what they mostly remember is not turkey or roast beef or anything elaborate but child-friendly suppers that their mothers could easily prepare after a day of work inside or outside the home and a slew of last-minute Christmas preparations. Expecting to hear about roast geese, large baked hams, or plates of carp (traditional in Catholic Austria and Poland), I heard instead about fried bologna, Älplermagronen (a casserole of macaroni, cubed potatoes, cheese, and fried onions that’s served with stewed fruit), wieners and potato salad, or great slabs of gingerbread with whipped cream. One woman remembered plates of home-cured cold cuts—with white rolls as a special treat instead of coarse dark bread. Since Swiss Christmas trees are usually covered with not only candles but colorful, foil-wrapped chocolates that disappear in the blink of an eye, it’s probably just as well that Swiss children are not expected to eat a big meal on Christmas Eve.

Some of the people I’ve asked about their Christmas memories recall a fancier meal with visiting relatives on the 25^th or 26^th of December. There, a leg of lamb might have been served, tongue in caper sauce, pork tenderloin in a pastry crust, stewed rabbit, boiled ham, or a huge pastry shell or vol-au-vent, bought at the bakery and filled at home with mushrooms and chunks of veal in a thick cream sauce. Turkey stuffed with chestnuts appears in parts of French-speaking Switzerland, a meal that sounds closer to the British tradition than Bern’s.

Most of these traditional foods have now faded away at holiday time, replaced by modern Switzerland’s favorite Christmas meal. It’s called “Chinese fondue,” although it strikes me as more like the Japanese dish shabu-shabu. A large pot of simmering meat broth sits in a chafing dish in the middle of the table, along with a platter of thin slices of raw beef, pork, lamb, and veal and bowls of different sauces—horseradish, curry, garlic, mustard, and tomato-flavored, usually made with a sour cream base. Guests use long forks to cook slices of meat in the broth and dip them in the sauces. Rice and a green salad are often served with the meat, and when everything is gone, the broth is divided into small bowls and drunk before dessert is served.

I agree that fondue Chinoise makes a wonderful festive meal; I serve it on New Year’s Eve, however. So even after thirty-five years in Switzerland, I haven’t come up with a traditional Christmas dinner. I like rituals, but perhaps this is an example of the value of diversity.

What about you, readers? If you celebrate Christmas, do you have a traditional meal? Did you have one as a child?

The photo of the Advent wreath is by Michaela Gabler.