Malinda Lo
Blog
Dec 14, 2010
Christmas cookies
When I was a kid, I always wanted to bake cookies at Christmas. I wanted to make gingerbread men. I wanted to make sugar cookies in the shapes of angels. I wanted to make Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I wanted to make peanut butter cookies and press the tines of a fork down against the dough.
Oatmeal cookies with dark chocolate and dried cherries
But I grew up in a first-generation immigrant Chinese American household, and in order to make those kinds of cookies, we’d need, among other things: molasses, cookie cutters, chocolate chips, and loads of butter. Things we didn’t have in our Chinese pantry. One year I somehow convinced my parents to buy a bottle of molasses, but without cookie cutters, I ended up cutting out shapes using cardboard stencils. The cookies turned out to taste like rocks, I remember. It’s not really a surprise. I’d never eaten freshly made gingerbread cookies; nor had my mother, so it’s not like we knew what to aim for.
For Christmas dinner, my mother made Chinese-style roast duck that she salted and hung out overnight in the garage (it was cold out there). We also had shrimp and peas, red-cooked pork, meatballs rolled in glutinous rice, stir-fried vegetables, and maybe winter melon soup. The food was delicious, but I would check out cookbooks from the library and pore over recipes for roast beef and yorkshire pudding, fantasizing about what other people might eat for Christmas dinner.
Years later, I’ve had roast beef and yorkshire pudding. My mom’s roast duck was way better. But for a long time, during the holidays especially, the differences between my family and what seemed like the entire rest of America rose up crystal clear. We didn’t do what everybody else — on TV, in books, and in my school (I grew up in Colorado) — seemed to do.
It didn’t make much of a difference when I was a little kid, but as I grew older and went through adolescence — a period when just about the most important thing ever is fitting in with everyone else — these differences frustrated me. Beneath the frustration, of course, was a yearning to be like everyone else. Maybe if I ate the right food, I’d fit in.
Cutting out sugar cookies
During the holidays, everybody struggles with expectations and demands. Emotions that have been banished for the rest of the year can rise up unexpectedly when you’re forced to spend time with family members whom you don’t normally see.
For queer people, it’s not unusual to be forced to sit through long meals with relatives who openly reject you because of your sexual orientation. For immigrants who are not Christian, Christmas is a time that can make you feel like the most foreign foreigner ever to exist. I’ve been in both situations, and every year at the holidays, I can’t help but remember them.
Maybe that’s why I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays. I think that lately I’ve been veering toward the love side, but that’s because I’ve finally started to figure out how to celebrate this time of year on my own terms. But let me tell you, it’s a battle I still fight, at least internally, every year. Those feelings of difference-as-a-bad-thing haven’t entirely been erased. The media and entertainment industry still make giant fusses about trees and turkeys and gifts — oh, the gifts! — and the pure utter joy of family time (sarcasm intended).
But. One of the best things about being an adult in this country is that you get to choose how to celebrate (or not celebrate) the holidays.
Amy and I have a giant (fake) tree. In many ways, her enthusiasm for Christmas has erased so much of the anxiety about the holiday that I’ve struggled with. And over the years I’ve acquired plenty of cookie cutters, as well as taught myself what good gingerbread tastes like.
This week, I made both red-cooked pork and sugar cookies. Both are delicious. Both are perfect for Christmas.
A note on recipes: The oatmeal cookies are basically regular oatmeal cookies, but with crumbled dark chocolate and dried cherries. The sugar cookie recipe is the basic vanilla cookie dough recipe from Martha Stewart Living’s December 2010 issue. The icing is the quick lemon cookie icing from the Joy of Cooking.
What a terrific post. It made me think about how I’ve always enjoyed exploring the Christmas tradition of other countries (Scotland last year, Austria in years past), but being a nominal Christian and from an Anglo culture meant that I wasn’t a complete outsider. It’s interesting that your partner’s enthusiasm for the holiday has erased your anxiety, because for some couples the holidays are a source of friction (of the “that’s not how we do things at my house” variety). In my household, we’ve blended things, but in my sister’s family, it’s her husband’s family’s way and no other.
Fantastic fantastic post. I grew up in Ohio (as the only little brown girls on the block) and can totally relate – we had Indian food (sometimes Chinese food… one year duck) for Xmas… and the 4th of July too.. My parents couldn’t understand why people would spend money for things like decorations – although my mom did make a lot of hand made ornaments for our little tree that I still use. But Cookies? My mom didn’t get why people would bake when there were perfectly good bakeries out there…
It was REALLY freeing to grow up and go away from Ohio – realizing that I had a lot of vibrant traditions – Diwali, Durga Puja – to draw from and a thriving Desi community to do it with. But that feeling of our house feeling different, smelling different (people eating with their HANDS!) still remains sometimes…
I think the difference is that the couples who argue over how things are done at their house both have ownership over their family’s holiday traditions. They feel invested in them, and they feel like they have a right to argue for their practices.
A new immigrant to America is always trying to figure out what American practices are, and how to practice them. They probably don’t feel like they have ownership over these traditions, so they can’t argue over the right way to do things.
That’s funny you mention the 4th of July! We knew that people had barbeques then, but my family always made it a Chinese barbeque! My mom marinated pork chops in soy sauce and cooking wine, I think — a typical Chinese marinade. The concept of “barbeque sauce” is still kind of strange to me.
And yes, the houses smell different. The smell of a Chinese kitchen is so entirely different than that of your average white American family’s. I agree about the moving away thing being freeing — it really is. I’ve loved discovering a valid and lively Chinese community in California.
I can relate in a lot of ways. Being a Jewish kid in the South in the 70s and 80s, I always felt like an outsider at holiday time. I’ve since learned to appreciate the beauty and spirit of the season (not so much the traffic and rush of it all). But as a kid, it can be tough to be different!
Thank you for this awesome post, Malinda. My parents did make things like turkey for us (back when I still ate meat!), but I find like you, that I want a mix of favorites.
Now I’m hungry. Thanks a lot.
Great post! I love the way you placed the photos throughout instead of all at the end. It gave the reading experience of wonderful kind of non-sequitor-ness.