A Holiday Table Reflects Faith and Culture
The air is thick. It’s a humid, fragrant cloud of steamed corn, simmering chiles, and generations of laughter inside Elena Hernandez’s Los Angeles home. This isn’t just dinner prep. This is the tamalada, an assembly line of faith and family that happens every December before Nochebuena.
It’s a ritual. For the Hernandez family, the holiday season doesn’t begin with a shopping mall playlist but with the rustle of dried corn husks soaking in the sink. The process, which spans two full days, is a physical embodiment of their Mexican Catholic heritage, a tradition that connects the kitchen to the nativity story of Las Posadas. Elena Hernandez, the family’s 78-year-old matriarch, doesn’t use measuring cups for the masa. She uses her hands.
“The masa tells you when it’s ready,” Elena Hernandez explains, her fingers expertly smoothing the corn dough onto a husk. “It has to feel alive. A recipe can’t teach you that; it’s a memory you hold in your hands.”
So much of identity is cooked in a pot. While corporate advertising pushes a singular, Rockwellian image of the American holiday table, the reality in homes across the country is a far more personal and complex expression of history. The food we serve isn’t just sustenance; it’s a story of migration, belief, and belonging.
Across the country in a Brooklyn brownstone, a different scent fills the air. It’s the smell of hot oil. For eight nights, David Cohen’s family celebrates Hanukkah with a culinary tradition rooted in the miracle of the oil that lasted. The main event is the latke, a simple potato pancake that sparks a not-so-simple annual debate: applesauce or sour cream?
“It’s controlled chaos,” David Cohen admits over the sizzle of grated potatoes hitting the pan. “My mother, Sarah, insists hand-grating is the only way to get the texture right, but I bought a new food processor this year to increase the latke throughput for the kids and their friends.” The upgrade, however, hasn’t settled the great topping debate. Cohen says his kids arguing over which condiment is superior has, itself, become an integral part of their holiday tradition.
This act of preserving and adapting recipes is a powerful cultural anchor. It’s a way to deploy memory, year after year. These meals are a direct counter-narrative to the idea of a homogenized holiday, argues Dr. Anya Sharma, a food anthropologist at Georgetown University and author of The Communal Spoon: How Food Binds Generations. Sharma believes the holiday table functions as a “physical archive of a family’s journey.”
“Each ingredient can tell a story of migration, adaptation, and even resistance,” Dr. Sharma states in her book. “When a corporation tries to sell a monolithic holiday experience, it ignores the vibrant, diverse ecosystem of traditions thriving in American homes. It’s not just turkey; it’s turkey served alongside Jollof rice, or brisket next to a tray of kugel.”
That blended reality is on full display at the Adebayo family’s home in Houston. Funke Adebayo, who is Nigerian-American, orchestrates a Christmas dinner that honors both her Christian faith and her husband’s family’s Southern traditions. The centerpiece isn’t one dish, but two.
A glistening, clove-studded ham sits proudly at one end of the table. At the other, a deep pot of Jollof rice glows with a fiery, reddish-orange hue, its smoky aroma a testament to Funke Adebayo’s carefully guarded technique. The famous West African dish, a source of friendly rivalry between Nigerians and Ghanaians, is non-negotiable.
“For my family, the red of the Jollof is the color of celebration, of life itself,” Funke Adebayo says, stirring a pot of goat meat stew to serve alongside it. “It sits on the table right next to my mother-in-law’s sweet potato casserole. These dishes don’t just coexist; they’re having a conversation. They tell the story of how our family came to be.”
The conversation is the point. It’s in the steam rising from a corn husk, the sizzle of oil in a pan, and the shared plate where two distinct histories meet. It’s a story told not with words, but with flavor. A story that nourishes more than the body.
Next year, Funke Adebayo’s teenage daughter wants to add her own dish to the holiday table: macaroni and cheese, but made with smoked gouda and Nigerian suya spice.
