From Mr. Handsome…
If someone told you that one of their Christmas traditions was eating pizza on Christmas Eve, what would you think? I’ll admit that it sounds a bit underwhelming. Maybe they burned their Christmas ham a few years in a row and ended up ordering pizza anyway, so they eventually decided to just forget the ham and go straight to the pizza.
Well, I’m here to tell you that I ate pizza every Christmas Eve as a child. My parents still serve it to this day.
We didn’t buy it from the freezer section at the grocery store or order it from a restaurant. No, this was homemade, completely from scratch. We called it shepherd’s pie. I’m not sure why. True shepherd’s pie is a casserole with meat, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and cheese. But for some reason, on Christmas Eve, pizza became shepherd’s pie for us. I suppose family traditions don’t have to make sense.
As my siblings and I grew, we started helping with dinner. By the time we were teenagers, we were making it entirely by ourselves. We improved our techniques each year, and the pizza got better and better. After trying my uncle’s lasagna, we switched out the canned pizza sauce for his secret tomato sauce recipe. After trying Chicago style pizza, we started experimenting with deep dish.
When I met Ellie, I was horrified to learn that she liked a bizarre, newfangled concoction of toppings known as “Hawaiian.” I couldn’t imagine putting ham (or Canadian bacon) and pineapple on pizza. “I’m dating a hippie,” I thought. But to impress Ellie on the first Christmas she spent with my family, I put some pineapple and ham on a pizza, and lo and behold, it actually tasted pretty good.
We have been quarantining since a week before the baby was born, to avoid all the COVID and flu germs going around, so we didn’t see my family for Christmas. My mother was kind enough to prepare some homemade pizzas for us and freeze them. We cooked them in the oven, and they tasted delicious.
Do you have any unusual Christmas (or any other holiday) traditions?
OhioMama
This out a smile on my face, and I really needed that today so thank you. My family and I have pizza on Christmas Eve also but we just buy it from the freezer section at the store. When we moved into our house my husband and I wanted to start our own tradition so. I take the kids to Christmas Eve service and we come home and have pizza for dinner and then we go see the Christmas lights at Olgebay. When we get home the kids go to bed so Santa can come. I love forward to Christmas Eve night just as much as I look forward to seeing the kids open gifts.
Ellie
How fun! I love seeing Christmas lights. And it was even better this year with Little Buddy old enough to enjoy them.
Lori
For as long as I can remember we have had cheese fondue or raclette on Christmas Eve. You can’t ever have too much cheese, right?
Ellie
Ooh, fondue. What is raclette?
Lori
Gruyere or Raclette cheese melted on a special grill and poured over boiled potatoes, sliced baguette bread, pickles and other various foods. We add Bratwurst too.
Anonymous
It’s a typical Swiss dish. Basically you melt slices of cheese in a special oven and then you put it on potatoes. It’s delicious!
Ellie
That sounds really good!
Anonymous
It is the best dinner ever during winter. We make it all the time here in Switzerland. 🙂
Anonymous
Is that picture taken on an outdoor grill? I’m confused about what sort of grid that is.
Ellie
That’s just our stove. We should have staged the photo better. 🙂
Anonymous
Did you have a pot of pasta overflow?
Ellie
Yes! Do you have any suggestions for cleaning it? That would be much appreciated!
Anonymous
Scrub with a paste of baking soda and water or cream of tartar and white vinegar. Or do the old trick of an overnight soak in ammonia fumes. Mom used to do this with our grill grate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfYNrvmwHDs
Shela G
This sounds like a wonderful fun tradition!! We had a christmas time tradition with my Grandma. It started out with a simple question from Grandma. Since we would be having a huge Christmas meal the next day she asked what was something easy we could have for dinner I answered how about Tacos and that is what we ended up having. We continued that through the years That is how Tacos became part of our Christmas celebration. Funny how something you do not expect to becomes a treasured tradition.
Ellie
I love tacos! LOL
Anonymous
Is there a story behind that crust? It looks more like a biscuit texture, not a yeast-risen pizza crust. Also, no toppings at all on 3 of those pizzas? Not even cheese?
Ellie
It has yeast in it, but you don’t allow it to rise much, so it ends up being more bread-like. We top them and then add another layer of crust, then a bit of sauce on the top.
Anonymous
I’d rather have frozen pizza because yours looks extremely unappealing.
Anonymous
I guess that’s a real pizza pie!
Jennifer
After Christmas Eve services at church with family- virtual this year- we always go Waffle House for dinner( and we always bring a gift for our waiter and waitress Ex: hat and gloves and extra tip).
When my husband’s parents were alive and we alternated- they lived in Oak Ridge TN- we always went to The Oak Ridge Play House to watch “A Christmas Carol”- Then Big Ed’s pizza. He always had a stocking for my boys- snuck in advance by Grandma.
Also when my boys turned five- to teach them many lessons- they used their money to buy all the fixings for a full Christmas dinner and they donated it to a family in need.
The 2 youngest are 16 and 21 and they still do this- but my 21 year old donates to someone on campus in need.❤️
Ellie
I LOVE your tradition of bringing your waiter or waitress a gift. That is so thoughtful.
Anonymous
Looks good but then I love pizza. Where is the cheese on the pizza, I don’t see it. That sounds like a fun Christmas Eve tradition for a family
A
In Japan, KFC is the go to meal for Christmas. People will preorder their buckets of chicken months in advance. This tradition came about in 1974 and was due to holiday marketing campaign.
Several years ago I insisted we have KFC for Christmas, because I love anime. So that’s now what we eat for our Christmas meal.
Ellie
How interesting! Thanks for sharing.
Anonymous
I’ve heard of that. I read a Japanese blog and they mentioned that last month. Personally, I haven’t eaten KFC since 1976, and I’m not making that number up, that was the last time I know I ate their food. I haven’t eaten anything from McDonald’s since 1990 either. I have no desire for fast food. If I’m out running errands and it’s lunchtime and I’m starving, I’ll pop in a grocery store and buy a banana and a yogurt. I actually keep spoons in my glove compartment for this reason! It’s faster than any drive-thru and better for you.
Anonymous
This was my family’s tradition too. Not homemade though, from a certain pizza place we all enjoyed.
Anonymous
The Italian in me is crying at how awful those pizzas look.
Jo
I’m Italian, too, and thought they didn’t look like pizzas . Many Southerners aren’t familiar with “real” Italian food.
Ellie
That seems strange to make such a correlation. It’s true that I haven’t spent much time in Italy (only a few hours driving through on a road trip), and Mr. Handsome hasn’t ever been to Europe. I would be interested to hear your explanation of a real Italian pizza.
Anonymous
Many Italian pizzas are paper-thin and very crispy. They are meant to be eaten by hand in many cases and are often foldable as the New Yorker poster stated.
Anonymous
The crispiness of the crust is mostly on the bottom, from baking on a stone in a hot oven or from a wood-fired stove. There’s still some chewiness to the crust, allowing you to fold it. It’s a balance between crispy and chewy. And the pizza should drip grease from the cheese or the pepperoni! Or at least leave grease stains on the paper plate, proving authenticity. The slice should be bigger than the plate too, LOL.
Mary
My dad loved to tell the story of going to Jim’s Spaghetti House in my mom’s hometown of Huntington, WV. He was appalled at what they called spaghetti. Real Italian is what you grow up eating in an Italian family. Every region has their specialities. It’s been Americanized as have many Mexican recipes.
Anonymous
Jim’s Spaghetti is a local favorite! 🙂
Anonymous
The New Yorker in me is wondering how you fold a slice.
Mary
I’m Italian too, have traveled to Italy many times, and have made a lot of pizzas. Ellie’s pizzas look fine. What they taste like is more important!
Sue
Ellie’s family came up with a recipe for their version of pizza. It’s not traditional pizza but it’s what they like.
Anonymous
Are Christmas Eve tradition is we get Chinese food for dinner.
Ellyn
Sweet story and sounds like you all had a cozy holiday! 🙂 thank you for sharing that story.
Andrea Boggs
Pizza is a must with my cousins and I on Christmas Eve! When I was little we did pizza because my grandparents worked and clean up was easy. Now my grandparents like ham and the full meal. But we, mostly grown, grandchildren eat pizza.
Lisa
That sounds like a delicious tradition. I do like Hawaiian pizza like Ellie. My family tradition on Christmas Eve when I was growing up was to gather with my dad’s side of the family. Since Dad and his siblings were 100% Swedish, that meant lutefisk and Swedish meatballs. With my husband and children, we typically have “crock pot food” for Christmas Eve because we have church at 5 p.m. which features our Sunday School program. This year we had cheesy turkey hot sandwiches. Other years we’ve had scalloped potatoes and ham.
Ellie
I’m always up for Swedish meatballs. Delicious. What is lutefisk?
Lisa
It is fish soaked in lye. It smells terrible. It is white and it is eaten with either white sauce or melted butter on top. Where we live rural Minnesota, there is a church that always serves a lutefisk and meatball dinner in November. They get people to attend from hundreds of miles away. I don’t know how the turnout has been the past two years with COVID, though. My sister and I always took our dad and he loved it.
Ellie
Very interesting! Thank you for sharing, Lisa. 🙂
Anonymous
Did you have any exposure to cultural diversity when you were growing up, any discussions about how others live or eat, any examples in your social circle? Because it’s hard to believe you live (kinda) in the midwest and you don’t know about lutefisk. There’s a great big wonderfully diverse world out there, and food is one way to experience it!
Ellie
My parents made a point to introduce us to foods from different cultures when I was growing up, but there were no Swedish restaurants where we lived. We did travel to Sweden when I was 10 years old to visit friends, but they didn’t serve lutefisk.
Anonymous
You don’t have to go to a Swedish restaurant to find lutefisk. Any Midwest Lutheran church at Christmas will do.
Bay.
Are family traditions on Christmas Eve is Chinese food. And Christmas Day it’s Roast beef. My nephew wanted Chinese for Christmas Eve.
Ellie
I love Chinese food! Do you have a favorite restaurant?
Bay
China Cafe. It is made with no sodium. It saids no MSG on the menu
Kat
I live in Germany and the traditional meal on Christmas Eve is potato salad and sausages. Also the kids get their presents right after church on Christmas Eve. Since our kids are not much into potato salad, we decided on something that could easily be prepared in advance and ended up with spaghetti. In pre-Corona times, we usually spent the holidays in Switzerland with the family and also had raclette or fondue on Christmas Eve.
Anonymous
Kartoffelsalat und knockwurst! My kind of meal. Mit sauerkraut. We used to have those with roast goose on Christmas too.
Anonymous
Nice meal! Lots of fun!
For our supper we always had homemade chili. Later in evening a variety dainty tray, homemade eggnog and Christmas oranges.
Hella
Hi Ellie,
Warmest congratulation to you and Mr. Handsome to the birth of your second baby boy (Mini Buddy?)!
We have a family tradition of eating red herring salad with white bread on Christmas Eve. For the kids or those who don‘t want the salad we have wiener with ketchup and mustard.
It‘s a tradition my grandmother braught from her childhood, and all my family, my father and his brothers, my sisters and cousins, we all grew up with it. And our spouses learnt to love the red herring salad … my husband after eating several years wiener 😜.
Two days before Christmas Eve we meet and prepare the salad. The ingredients have to be cut to julienne.
My older daughter started joining the preparation „Schnippel-Pippel“ more then 20 years ago and started eating it about 3 years ago, when she was 24. My younger daughter is 20 years old and still eats wiener. 😂 She says the salad looks even more dangerous since she knows about the ingredients.
I don‘t know any other German family with the same tradition. But I‘m living in a region far away from the sea. We don‘t have a sea-fish salad tradition at all in our area. More carps and trouts and other fresh-water fishes. Also for Christmas Eve. 😉
Kindly!
Ellie
Thanks for sharing, Hella. What does red herring salad consist of?
Hella
Hi Ellie,
The ingredients of our red herring salad are herring fillet, cooked chicken breast or veal meat, boiled eggs, boiled beet, apples, pickles, walnuts and mayonnaise.
Old family receipt. 😉
Kindly,
Hella
d
pineapple on pizza is as gross to me as chocolate covered garlic lol! each is ok by themselves but not together
we had neighbors growing up that were italian so their meal was lasagna for every big occasion. christmas, thanksgiving, easter, birthday, anniversary, always lasagna. they were like why eat ham or turkey when you can have lasagna!
Ellie
I LOVE lasagna!
Anonymous
Who here does Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve?
Anonymous
The pizzas look delicious! We don’t have a certain kind of food for Christmas Eve every year. We do try to make it something a little easier to prepare since we have a big meal on Christmas Day.
Bay
I live pineapple pizza.
Diana
What a fun tradition! I love anything that makes the holiday feel special.
We have appetizers on CE. Whatever I feel like having that year. Deviled eggs, veggies and dip, fried dough and meatballs, Philly cheese steaks, and a cheese ball were on the menu this year.
Pizza is like fingerprints. No right or wrong way to enjoy. Can’t imagine criticizing someone’s homemade pizza. So sad.