Since I moved to Tramin in South Tyrol in 2020, I have felt very little desire to actively participate in Christmas traditions. I’ve been more of a lurker, enjoying the festivities and the atmosphere without necessarily contributing in any way. In 2019, I baked more than 200 cookies for charity, but most of that process involved me in a restaurant kitchen working alone with occasional help. I left for India soon after dropping off the goodies to spend Christmas with my family in Goa. Since 2020, I have been here in my marital home every December. Part of the lure has been how un-stressful it is for me. My mother-in-law has very clear boundaries about what she likes to do and what doesn’t bring her joy. She makes a fantastic stollen using her mother’s recipe, but she doesn’t like the intricacies of making cookies. Shaping things with her hands is not her idea of fun. Even last year, since she had been gifted stollen, she decided not to make it. I respect this aspect of her… this internal voice that tells her that she doesn’t need to perform for anyone. Unlike at my family’s table, the spread at my in-laws is not so elaborate. On Christmas eve we usually eat high-quality smoked salmon with freshly grated horse radish and bread. There’s always excellent wine, but that’s generally all there is. The first time I was pregnant, I had to bring my own food. I’ll have to do it this time too. And yet, I wouldn’t complain, because we generally sit around the table around 6 or 7 pm, eat well, then we listen to the brass band playing Christmas carols from atop the clock tower after which we open our gifts. Later, we eat cookies—usually gifted to my in-laws by relatives—and still later, drink a heady orange punch made with white wine, fresh oranges, and some rum.

The whole affair is so vastly different from my childhood and even adult Christmases with my family, where we planned our menu weeks in advance. My mother usually makes the sorpotel at least 10 days before so that it is completely rife with rich flavours by the time we place it on the table for Christmas lunch. My sister and I would make at least five kinds of salads and we often had three kinds of meats, including a mutton curry and a chicken dish (often cafreal), sometimes also prawns. As our family expanded, we had to shift the table to the centre of the room and bring in more chairs so we could all sit together. We rarely ate before 2 pm. We rarely left the table before 4.30 pm. The morning was generally frantic, spent mostly in the kitchen. And each year my sister and I endeavoured to prepare as much as we could in advance to reduce  our anxiety levels on Christmas morning, which was also when we used to go over to the neighbours to offer the sweets we had been making the whole of December.