International Christmas

Yesterday was the eve of the Russian Orthodox Christmas. Usually I am in a festive mood on this day, and we celebrate it as a big family holiday. But this time I was feeling sad and depressed, my family in Russia, me in the UK, thousands of kilometers separating us and everybody I know has celebrated Christmas on 25 December.

But my forecast of a lonely evening in front of my laptop proved to be completely wrong! I started getting Facebook messages from my UK friends inquiring when we are meeting for the Christmas dinner. Feeling pleasantly surprised that people remember about it, I decided to give it a try. I gave the basic guidelines such as how many dishes we should have for Christmas dinner and what we can or can't have... And I must admit the result surpassed even my most optimistic expectations!

We were a mixed group representing Dominican Republic, Brasil, USA and Russia. So I tried to be flexible and suggested bending some rules to make our menu more democratic and suitable for everyone at the Christmas table. According to the traditions of Russian Orthodox Christmas, the festive dinner should be not even vegetarian but actually vegan. Meat is a no-no but so is cheese, eggs, milk - in a word, all dairy products and all dishes containing them.

So without realising it I presented a real challenge to my guests and offered that we shouldn't give up on cheese or eggs. However, my friends stood up to the challenge and prepared such a great variety of vegan dishes that we don't normally have even back home. Honestly, in theory there should be twelve dishes. In practice we usually have five or six "real dishes" like potatoes, fish etc. And other "dishes" include tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olives (all counted separately) just put around the table to make it look nice, no-brainer!

I felt a pang of guilt of giving my friends so much work to do especially considering the fact that as a dreadful cook I didn't risk cooking anything on my own and mostly volunteered in peeling potatoes, washing fruit or doing anything else that fell within my "cooking" capacities. But watching the enthusiasm and energy everyone put into the preparation process (albeit making a few jokes and complaints on the rigidity of the rules and absence of the traditional turkey or chicken), I felt we had taken the correct path by choosing to stick to the traditions.

Finally, we had a luxurious Christmas (vegan but still luxurious!) menu consisting of such delicious food as garlics and carrots heated in the oven in an olive oil, pasta, mashed potatoes, different kinds of fish, rice and of course tempting, burning your tongue and awakening all your senses - pickle!

Having eaten until we could hardly stand up from the table and having enjoyed the ambience of a real family dinner, we promised each other to stick to our new tradition and celebrate the forthcoming (or if there are none maybe invent) holidays in a proper fulfilling way like this!