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’Tis the Season to Overdo Everything. But Does It Have to Be?

Or why cooking during Christmas shouldn’t be as exhausting as it is

Charlie Brown
Rooted
6 min readDec 20, 2024

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Image courtesy of author

The first time I visited my now husband’s family home during the holiday season, I thought I’d entered Christmas nirvana.

The place was filled with decorations. There were piles of presents under the tree and my mother-in-law would make me any drink my heart desired, at any time of day — because it was Christmas! Any semblance of appropriate drinking hours was out of the window.

And the food. She prepared a five-hour-long lunch with more turkey, stuffing, and vegetables than I could ever eat. Not to mention the starter, dessert course, cheese course, and after-dinner chocolates.

This was how I thought Christmas should be. A time to let loose and eat and drink whatever the hell I wanted.

Indulgent. Hedonistic.

It was a far cry from my own rather puritanical upbringing with our tiny Christmas tree, zero other decorations and a Christmas lunch that — at best — resembled little more than a normal Sunday roast.

I’d complain to my mother about her way of doing Christmas. She told me it was because she and my father didn’t believe in overconsumption. They thought people were too…

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Rooted
Rooted

Published in Rooted

Deep journeys through food and drink culture. A boostable publication

Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown

Written by Charlie Brown

Food, wine & culture writer. 12+ years in hospitality. Editor of Rooted, a Medium food & drink pub. thesaucemag.substack.com

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