Catering for Christmas in the Age of Overconsumption
When everything tells you to overindulge, how do you prevent exhausting yourself?
The first time I visited my now husband’s family home for Christmas, I felt like I had entered Christmas nirvana.
The place was filled with decorations. There were piles of presents under the tree and my mother-in-law would make me any drink my heart desired, at any time of day — because this was Christmas! All semblance of appropriate drinking hours were out of the window.
And the food. A five-hour-long lunch with more turkey, stuffing, and vegetables than I could ever eat. Not to mention the starter, dessert course, cheese course, and after-dinner chocolates.
Not only that, but they did it all again the following day. I got to experience it twice.
This was how I thought Christmas should be. A time to let loose and eat and drink whatever the hell I wanted.
It was a far cry from my rather puritanical upbringing with our tiny Christmas tree, zero other decorations and a Christmas lunch that resembled little more than a normal Sunday roast.
I thought my parents had it wrong. This was the time for overindulgence! For groaning tables of food! For smoked salmon blinis and Champagne at 10 am!
Returning home from my husband’s family, I’d complain to my mother about her way of doing Christmas. She told me it was because she and my father didn’t believe in overconsumption. They thought people were too wasteful and didn’t want to be a part of it. I also didn’t realise until later that they couldn’t afford the sort of Christmas my parents-in-law could.
At 20 years old, I didn’t see that. I just thought they were Scrooges.
They weren’t Scrooges. For a start, I hate that we liken anyone who opts out of Christmas overindulgence to a greedy, selfish, angry Victorian landlord.
And 20 years later, I’m wondering if my parents had it — at least in part — right. Certainly, I’ve become much more like them in my Christmas consumption habits.
Next week, I’ll return to the UK and I am in charge of Christmas Day food. And yes, it will look a lot like how my mum’s used to.
Albeit with a bit more cheese and wine.
I may have thought “normal” people’s Christmas celebrations were overindulgent 20 years ago but now, it’s even more so. More food. More presents. More everything.
It might be time we start addressing that.
Take 30% off paid Sauce subscriptions until the end of December
I don’t mean to ram down your throat how much food we waste at Christmas, but, if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s enough to give you serious indigestion:
The UK throws away seven million tons of food during December.
That includes five million Christmas puddings, two million turkeys and 74 million mince pies.
In the US, there is a 25% increase in food waste between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I’ve seen people’s tendency to over buy with my own eyes. Back when I ran my wine store and bar, we would make around three times the revenue during December than any other month The amount of wine people would buy for their Christmas celebrations was staggering.
But that is pretty normal. We are primed to believe we must have the Champagne at breakfast, the fancy red and whites at lunch, the sweet Sherry or Port with the puddings.
The saving grace about alcohol is that is that most of it doesn’t have an expiry date, so at least I knew it was going to be drunk eventually.
But a lot of foodstuffs do have an expiration. And you can only eat so many turkey curries or sandwiches before that half-eaten bird goes in the trash.
I get why we overindulge at Christmas. For a start, many of us have been brought up on a steady diet of the “perfect Christmas” peddled by any company that can afford a beautiful Christmas advert. The ones that convince you the Christmas of your dreams is only a huge table of food away.
Those adverts are scarily good at hitting you in the feels. I just watched a bunch as part of this story’s research and they made me both homesick and comforted. I’m not the only one — 70% of young adults (25-34) find Christmas ads to be the “ultimate festive mood booster.”
In reality, these adverts are made by a bunch of multi-billion-dollar turnover supermarkets responsible for some of the worst quality produce out there. Yet I watch a 90-second advert I’m there thinking GET ME TO MARKS AND SPENCER’S, I WANT THAT PORK PIE.
British advertisement budgets are up this year, from £9 billion to £9.5 billion. And although I couldn’t find similar stats for the US, I did discover that they are a big contributor to the forecasted $979.5 billion Americans are set to spend during this holiday season.
Adverts clearly work so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out they are at least in part responsible for the mountains of food waste we’re faced with come January 1st. Mountains of food rendered “useless” when the new year's healthy eating resolutions kick in.
It’s not just adverts. My social media feeds are flooded with Christmas recipes. Goodfood.com has over 250. The Food Network has over 1000 — more than we could make in three lifetimes. It’s overwhelming. And it’s no wonder Christmas cooking stress is at an all-time high.
It’s not supposed to be like this. And honestly, it doesn’t have to be.
Calma.
Calma was one of the first Portuguese words I learnt when I moved here because I hear it nearly every day. It means exactly what it sounds like. Be calm. Don’t stress.
Whilst Christmas in Europe is still a big affair, something I’ve noticed over my years of living in Spain and Portugal — and spending Christmas in other European countries — is that it is much calmer than what I see back home and in the US.
Last year, my husband and I arrived in the Spanish city of Jerez two days before Christmas, just a couple of hours before all the stores closed. We headed to the market hall for provisions and expected carnage. Bare stalls. People fighting over the last slice of jamón.
But no. There were still chickens for sale at the butchers. There were still piles of vegetables. And the jamón stall had more than enough legs left to carve.
It was somewhat busy, but the atmosphere was calm. Orderly. No one was carting supermarket trolleys piled high with food and booze. They were buying just enough to see them through a couple of days before the stores opened again.
It’s not just about how much food people buy here but how they eat it too. When I first moved to Portugal, a local friend of mine told me the big Christmas Eve dinner was bacalhau, the famous Portuguese salt cod. When I asked him what they eat on Christmas Day, he shrugged and said nothing fancy, just leftover bacalhau.
The same went for my Spanish friends who ordered a fancy seafood spread for their New Years’ Eve celebrations. Lunch on New Years’ Day when we turned up? Leftover seafood.
The advertisements here are smaller, less shiny affairs too. There’s no celebrity peddling overconsumption for Portugal’s Pingo Doce supermarket chain, just an old Grandad buying a traditional cake, the Bolo de Rei.
Yes, Britain may be richer country than, say, Spain so perhaps we have more money to spend on this stuff. But we also spend a higher percentage of their annual salary on Christmas than our Spanish counterparts.
We — much like our US friends — go big on Christmas. We overconsume.
And we are exhausted by it.
I’ve been writing on and off about minimalism and simple living for about four years. It’s a hard space to write in because it runs the risk of looking over-earnest. Frugal. Scrooge-like.
But I’ve noticed a step change this year. Here on Substack, simple living essays go viral. I’ve got friends on Instagram boycotting Amazon. Deleting TikTok. Netflix’s Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy documentary seems to be everywhere.
We’re tired of big corporations telling us what to buy (everything), when to buy (always), and how much (a lot). We’re exhausted by the relentless status-signalling that comes with buying a new watch or Tesla or clothes we don’t need.
All so what? Rich men can get richer by making us poorer?
That goes for Christmas too. And because this is ostensibly a food Substack, I say that especially goes for Christmas food.
This isn’t about being frugal. It’s not about eating a sandwich with a glass of water instead of Christmas lunch. It’s just about taking steps to ensure catering for the holiday season doesn’t overwhelm you and your wallet just for the sake of keeping up Christmas appearances.
And that is a sort of a gift in itself is it not?
Thank you! Feeling much less Scroogy about our super simple Christmas. Our “tree” is now some lovely branches from a red twig dogwood that stays in the living room year round. Our presents to each other are travel. And meals are just a little more fancy than normal if company is coming. Calma! I think I will enjoy our first trip to Portugal this spring, this year’s Christmas present to ourselves.
I had the same experience visiting my in-laws in Texas for the first time! Not only were we on the mimosas by 10 am (I can't say I was against that); they also had the fire lit and the Aircon blasting at the same time 😆😭