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"What's for dinner?"

26 October, 2000

Consider, for a moment, the Family Holiday Dinner. Traditions vary depending on your culture, the region you live in, and your economic status, but all of us have probably participated in the Family Holiday Dinner. When I was a child, for example, we always had lots and lots of mashed potatoes, gravy so thick you can serve it with a fork, sweet potaoes cooked in molasses and cream, and black olives. Oh, yes, there were other things, the main dish was usually a turkey or a ham, there were various cooked vegetables, and there might be stuffing, but I can't remember any holiday meal that didn't include the potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, and olives. So now, as an adult, I can't think of a holiday without expecting those things.

Take a moment to imagine the menu of your ideal Holiday Dinner.

Now, imagine that you're spending your first major holiday with the family of the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. And imagine that you have just discovered that the menu is nothing like what you anticipated. Maybe you were expecting a turkey stuffed with bread stuffing, and the stuffing would contain celery and apple, just like Mom makes. Your prospective in-laws chop up the liver and giblets for the stuffing, so to you the stuffing tastes very strange and unsatisfying.

Or maybe your family always served thin, caramel-colored gravy that flowed easily over your food, but here you see some thick, off-white goop with unrecognizable things floating in it.

Perhaps you were expecting a steaming ham glazed with apricot and pineapple, and instead you see an enormous roasted pumpkin (Your new love forgot to mention that his/her parents are strict vegetarians). Or maybe you were expecting a turkey laid out on a serving platter, and instead they've just carried out a big alder plank with a giant roasted fish on it. And the fish's head is near your end of the table, so its broiled eye seems to be staring at you.

Whatever horrors you endure at the in-laws dinner table, nothing compares to the pain and suffering ahead of you the first time you and your new love prepare to celebrate a holiday in your own home. I can't count the number of disagreements I've participated in, witnessed, or heard about over minor things. Just to list a few examples:

• What kind of pickles go on the relish tray? Is there a relish tray at all? What do you mean, you've never heard of a relish tray!?
• Is stuffing cooked in the bird or out? Cornbread or regular? Do you put oysters in it?
• Should gravy be lumpy or smooth, thick or thin, opaque or transparent?
• Should jell-o have fruit in it, or just be clear?
• Should there be cranberry sauce on the table, and if so gelled or lumpy?
• Should the yams be cooked with honey, marshmallows, or molasses?
• Should mashed potatoes have lumps? Does it really matter whether they are smushed with a potato-masher, or is it okay to use the mixer? How much butter and milk should go in potatoes? What do you mean, you never put butter in the potatoes?!
• What do you mean, there's no mincemeat pie?
• What do you  mean, there's no pumpkin pie?

When people who love each other can't come to an agreement on things as trivial as this, is it any wonder that ethnic conflicts and religious wars rage on for generation after generation all around the world? I'm not trying to trivialize any world events, but all of this came to mind recently when a co-worker said, "I can't believe they're fighting in the middle east, again! Can't anyone be reasonable and compromise?"

The simple truth is that reason isn't the only force at work within the human psyche. There are emotions, values, preferences, and comfort levels effecting everything we do or think about. Compromise is only possible when your non-rationals don't exclude the other person's non-rationals.

For example, I have no strong feelings about cranberry sauce. I've made it from scratch, I've bought both the typical canned versions, and they all taste good to me. Not the same, but they're all acceptable. I confess to a very slight leaning toward the lumpy kind. My late husband couldn't stand the lumpy cranberry sauce. He complained about seeds getting in his teeth and an unpleasant aftertaste which I never noticed. We hould compromise. We could get the gelled kind or we could get both. And we were both fine with either one.

But sometimes those non-rationals do exclude each other. I'm a meat-eater, for another example. For big holiday dinners I want roast turkey or ham or a big prime rib roast or something along those lines. If my hubby was a strict vegetarian, with a firm religious belief that consuming animals was wrong, we're going to have a very difficult time coming up with a family dinner that doesn't leave one of us feeling resentment to the other afterwards.

It can seem so simple, when we are looking at a conflict in which we aren't directly involved. Things are quite different inside.

It's getting to be that time of year around here. Fortunately Michael and I have very similar tastes in food. We don't get into big disagreements about what to fix. In fact, usually it's more of a tussle over who gets to use the fun appliances. Just for the record, the new, standing KitchenAid mixer was a birthday present to me, so I get first dibs.

This page is copyright 2000 by Gene Breshears. Photograph is copyright 1998 by Julie Rampke. All Rights Reserved.