This time of year always gets me thinking about the traditions of our ancestors. Our family has quite a few of them, from all over the world, representative of the ‘melting pot’ in which my husband and I were raised, the USA.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally, the larger the generation gap I travel from our ancestors leaving their homeland, the more desperately I cling to the traditions they brought. And not just my family’s customs, Andy’s family’s too. We agree that our children should know something about where they came from.
My husband and I only two or three generations from the folks in our families that came to the United States from another country to start a new life, depending on what set of grandparents you reference. On both sides, our great and great-great grandparents spoke in native tongues and brought their traditions to a new land. Here’s how it breaks down for us:
Me (Teri)- my mother’s side is pretty much 100% French Canadian, my dad’s side is mostly Swedish, German & Scottish, according to my investigations on Ancestry.com. Interestingly, my grandma Bell’s grandparents changed their last name from Nelsen to Sundquist when they got to the USA because, ‘there were already to many Nelsen’s in the USA,’ or at least that’s what my grandma told me.
Andy- his mother’s side is also predominantly French Canadian, his dad’s side is mostly Polish. What’s interesting about the Polish side of his family is that you can only trace their history back to around World War II, when many of the genealogic records in Poland were destroyed by Nazi Germany during the Warsaw Uprising!
Without desperately clinging to these traditions and passing them down to our children they would 100% be forgotten. It’s an intentional task we have undertaken over the years, with the help of our extended families, to keep these customs alive. We’ve even added some things in that were lost as we’ve learned more about our heritage, things that our parents and their parents didn’t do (or just didn’t keep up with).
Many of our traditions revolve around our faith and are maintained by our Roman Catholic faith- Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Feast Days & Sacraments. Outside of those, we are careful to only incorporate customs that represent our best and most treasured memories from growing up with our great & grand-parents, so Lutefisk, step aside! (nobody ate it anyway, shhh) And while some of the things we do are not food related, like at church, a lot of them are. I’ll share a few things we love – some that are handed down, some that we’ve picked up along the way.
One that I learned about from following some Swedish-based accounts on Instagram is the Advent window star. If you’ve pulled into our driveway after dark, you may have noticed a couple stars in our South facing windows. Swedish window stars are traditionally hung during the Advent & Christmas seasons, and as you may have guessed, represent the star that lead the wise men to Jesus that very first Christmas. They also welcome our family home to spend Christmas together.
I do think they are lovely and so I left them up all year! I love the welcoming glow from the driveway and inside the house, and since they look more like stars than snowflakes, I think its appropriate? I might take them down after this Christmas though, to extend their life a bit.
The next tradition that I am working on incorporating really covers our German and Swedish roots, that is the Christmas candle pyramid, or Angel Chimes. From what I understand, these originated in Germany and are now also very popular in Sweden as well. Apparently, what started as the original candle pyramid evolved into our modern day Christmas tree!
I didn’t order the ‘chiming’ variety though because I’m pretty sure that Andy would have none of that noise going on all evening long while he’s trying to relax.
This picture is of the exact one I ordered, and so the photo credit goes to Magic Candle Studio on Etsy. Check it out if you’d think this is something you’d enjoy (not a paid advertisement, just sharing)
Swedish folks are not really known for their cooking, beyond meatballs, and even those, smothered in brown gravy, are not the same as the real thing; the ground meat seasoned with cinnamon and cloves in a dill cream sauce. White sauce & potato sausage are not that exciting. Lingonberries can only smother so much. Lutefisk (lye cured herring), is a gelatinous mess that smells like death. They do eat a lot of seafood at Christmas too, but I’m allergic to that, so we’ll stick with our French Canadian and Polish roots on this one.
On Christmas Eve, after Mass, we always go to the big farm, the dairy that Andy’s family owns and has operated for five generations now.
We gather around a huge table that runs from the dining room into the living room and share polish oplatek and after, their traditionally vegetarian meal of tomato soup and pierogis. Then Santa comes if the kids have been good. I’ve written previously about this, so if you’re interested in learning more about our Polish traditions, you can find that post HERE. The Jorasz’s have been celebrating Christmas in that same farmhouse just a few miles away from here, since 1915, without fail, something that they are very proud of.
My grandma Lantagne was famous for her meat pie, or Tourtière, and I have her original filling recipe, but I use a crust recipe of my own. This is a favorite with all of the the kids, but I only make it on Christmas Day (even though the kids would love it all year round). When I bake meat pie, our home fills with the scent of childhood Christmases at grandmas. My aunts, uncles and cousins all crowded into my grandparent’s teeny tiny little house, a structure that used to be a one-room schoolhouse! Unfortunately, all of our Christmases there stopped before the advent of cell phone photography, so I don’t have a picture to share. Or maybe that was actually a blessing, making my memories of it somewhat more precious?
We have started some traditions of our own too- going out into the woods together to find the perfect woods tree, the types of cookies we make, Christmas Eve pajamas, staying home on Christmas Day in them, going to the Christmas village in town on a Saturday night, and learning about the traditions I listed above too!
Just in case you are learning and looking to add a French Canadian tradition to your Christmas arsenal, here’s my grandma’s famous Tourtière recipe for you. If you try it, let me know what you think!
Grandma Lantagne’s Tourtière (Meat Pie)
Ingredients
Filling
- 2 lbs Ground Beef
- 1 lb Ground Pork
- 2 Medium potatoes shredded I use red and leave the skin on, use a grater
- 1 Onion finely chopped I use a grater on the onions too
- 1 tsp Cinnamon I use a little more, can be to taste
- 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves I use a little more, can be to taste
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Pepper
Crust
- 2 1/2 C All Purpose Flour
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 C Butter Cold
- 1 Egg Separate yolk from white
- 1/2 C Milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉
- Add all of the raw filling ingredients to a large pan and brown until about half done. Leave some pink showing in the meat, it will finish cooking as you bake the pie. Drain some of the grease if there's a lot.
- Prepare the crust
- In a large bowl combine flour and salt, cut in the cold butter with knives or a pastry cutter. Add the egg yolk and milk can stir till combined. The dough should be wet enough that it sticks together, but is not too sticky.
- Divide the dough in half and roll each half on a floured board into two 12" circles. Place one crust in the bottom of a 10" cast iron skillet or pie pan.
- Transfer the meat filling into the bottom crust and stop with the other crust, brush with egg white.
- Cut some slots in the pie crust too!
- Bake for 1 hour, center rack, until the internal temperature inside the pie is 165 ℉ I sometimes cover the pie loosely with foil if the crust starts to get too brown.
- Enjoy and let us know what you think!
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