Gathering In Faith Around The Holiday Table
The sound is a hiss. It’s the sound of shredded potatoes and onions hitting a quarter-inch of shimmering canola oil in a cast-iron skillet, a sound that for the Goldstein family in Brooklyn means Hanukkah has truly arrived. The air, thick with the scent of frying starch and sweet onion, is a physical presence in their small kitchen.
This is not just about dinner. For families like the Goldsteins, the annual ritual of making latkes is an act of remembrance, a story told through texture and taste. Sarah Goldstein, her knuckles white as she grips the spatula, watches her granddaughter grate the last of the potatoes. She insists the ritual is “less about the recipe and more about the repetition,” a way to physically connect generations across time. The oil itself is the protagonist, a symbol of the miracle of light that lasted for eight nights. Every golden-brown pancake pulled from the pan is a testament.
But in a world saturated with slick marketing campaigns and one-click holiday shopping, it’s easy to feel a certain skepticism about these traditions. Are they just nostalgic motions, or something more? The answer, it seems, depends on the intention behind the cooking. These holiday meals are a powerful counter-narrative to the season’s relentless commercialism.
“We’re seeing a conscious return to what I call ’embodied faith’,” explains Dr. Anjali Sharma, a cultural anthropologist whose work examines modern ritual. “People are tired of abstract beliefs. They want to feel their faith, to taste it. A shared meal is a high-throughput mechanism for cultural and spiritual transmission.”
So you find Father Michael O’Connell in the basement of St. Jude’s Parish, wrestling with a massive pot of cioppino. It’s Christmas Eve. He is orchestrating the local Italian-American community’s take on the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a tradition that, while not official Catholic liturgy, has become a deeply ingrained cultural practice. The feast, Father O’Connell believes, is a form of communion long before anyone steps into the sanctuary for Midnight Mass. He points to tables laden with baccalà, fried calamari, and shrimp scampi, all brought by different families. It’s a potluck, a decentralized offering. It’s messy and loud and utterly human.
The scene is different, yet spiritually similar, in the Khan household in Dearborn, Michigan. The end of Ramadan is marked by Eid al-Fitr, the “Festival of Breaking the Fast.” After a month of disciplined abstinence, the first days of Eid are an explosion of flavor, particularly sweetness. Aisha Khan arranges plates of sheer khurma, a delicate vermicelli pudding cooked in milk with dates and pistachios. The dish isn’t just a treat; it’s a symbol of shared relief and gratitude.
Sharing is the core principle. Before the family eats, portions are packed and distributed to neighbors and to those less fortunate, a tangible expression of Zakat al-Fitr, the obligatory charity paid at the end of Ramadan. Aisha Khan calls the practice “a reminder that our blessings are not truly ours until they are shared.” The open door, the constant flow of guests, the insistence that you have “just one more” sweet—it’s a hospitality that feels almost defiant in its generosity.
These gatherings aren’t about deploying a perfect, magazine-worthy tablescape. They are about process. They are about the latency between a child first watching a grandmother cook and, decades later, finally mastering the feel of the dough or the right temperature of the oil. Dr. Sharma notes that the “entire ecosystem of the holiday meal—the shopping, the prepping, the cooking, the serving, the cleaning—is the ritual itself.” It’s in the mundane, repetitive tasks where the sacred is often found.
It’s a powerful idea. That faith isn’t just something you believe, but something you do. Something you cook. Something you taste and share, year after year.
Back in Brooklyn, Sarah Goldstein shows her granddaughter how to use the edge of the spatula to press down on the latke, forcing the edges to become impossibly crisp while the inside stays soft. Not too hard, she warns. You don’t want to break it.
