Taste the Holidays

One interesting aspect of taste that's always intrigued me is how we use it as a basic metaphor for experiencing different emotions. I believe that "tasting defeat" is especially common, perhaps even cliché, as though you cannot "taste" defeat, you certainly can be overwhelmed by these feelings, negative or positive, and subsequently associate certain feelings with certain tastes. The two most significant holidays I can think of that I associate strongly with happiness and contentedness due to taste are Thanksgiving and Passover. Obviously, these two holidays revolve around food, but Passover has more nuances when it comes to tastes, specifically when participants eat bitter herbs, drink wine, and recite phrases and words before the actual meal. My family and friends that we celebrate Passover with describe the initial bitterness as a way for us to appreciate the more flavorful aspects of the meal.

Passover Meal, Sheri Silver

Though Thanksgiving is not religious in the same sense that Passover is, both holidays require a lot of preparation. In Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, Elizabeth Pérez makes a point to mention the rituals and process of preparing food for the gods. In doing so, she highlights “the opportunity to worship gods... venerate their ancestors, and foster Black solidarity by broadening kinship ties” (33). The preparation and conversation that occurs before a meal happens is crucial aspect. Much like how preparing and talking before, during and after Thanksgiving and Passover are also significant.

(Person preparing to cut up a turkey)

My dad always does the majority of cooking for both Thanksgiving and Passover. Sometimes he will have me and my sister help, or in past years we've had family friends bring dishes to lessen the load, but there is a kind of systematic chaos that occurs every year during these holidays. Often he will start prepping food the night before, whether that be marinating, chopping, blending, freezing or defrosting whatever we will use. It's become a joke that anyone who isn't cooking should stay out of the kitchen, lest they want to face my dad's wrath. Recently, though, we've had family friends that come over and chat at the dining table while he finishes up dishes. They sit at our table with a glass of alcohol and talk about anything and everything. In our family, these are the "micropractices" that Pérez mentions in Religion in the Kitchen.