When it comes to the festive menu, far more is at stake than stuffing.
Your choice of Christmas food has long been regarded as a sign of where your affinities lie. Christmas is a curious blend of the universal and the local. The food served to celebrate it encompasses more variety than a box of chocolates, yet most of us assume that the flavours of our country's Christmas, the treats and sweetmeats that mark out the day as special, are the flavours of Christmas. Imperial Britain went a step further than that: it tried to persuade the world – or at least the countries of the British Empire – that its traditions were the only acceptable ones. Soggy sprouts as soft power.
Christmas menus today offer a revealing insight into what each country has historically considered special. In much of northern Europe, December is a time to consume copious quantities of mulled wine and cookies, fragrant with ginger and cinnamon, anise and cloves. Sugar and spice were once hugely expensive—that, as much as anything, explains their role at Christmas. They were especially pricey in colonial America because it was allowed to trade only with Britain. The gingerbread-spiced lattes touted by American coffee shops at this time of year look even more indulgent in light of such a legacy.
In Denmark, Christmas means risalamande, a rice pudding enriched with almonds. Whereas spiced cookies show off products that were once scarce, the Danish Christmas celebrates the available. During the second world war many basic staples were in short supply across Europe, including rice, but dairy produce was abundant in Denmark (German forces nicknamed it “The Cream Front"). A dish involving copious quantities of whipped cream was an achievable treat for the occupied Danes.
Christmas in Japan, by contrast, is inextricably associated with fried chicken, thanks to a marketing brainwave by the manager of the country's first KFC in the 1970s. Originally aimed at homesick Americans and Britons, the festive “party barrels" soon took off across the whole country, propelled by the slogan: “Kentucky for Christmas!" Today millions of Japanese celebrate Christmas by scoffing KFC. Advance orders start in November.
