Home for the Holidays?

Food and holidays always seem to correlate, and it is no different in Mexico. There are Christmas punches and Day of the Dead breads and on and on and on.

And something tells me food and holidays, even the non-religious type, are linked and always have been, and for reasons other than spicing up annual obligations.

It seems that when celebrating holidays, we eat and talk and imbibe, and while we eat and talk and imbibe we create friendships and rekindle relationships and share moments. Is good food required in such circumstances or is it just there to bribe our participation all day? Or, am I being to cynical about holidays?

And if it truly is about people reveling in the company of loved ones and milking it for all it’s worth on every given occasion, which includes elaborate menus full of items requiring painstaking preparation, should it be for better reasons than bribery or culinary punctuation?

How about tradition? Most holidays have traditional foods that are only enjoyed at that time of year. Eggnog, green beer, cranberry sauce. Is it simply done because your mother before your mother before your mother did it? I’m leaning toward this theory, but it’s driving me to a sad realization. The realization is that most people probably don’t even know the history behind the traditional foods they painstakingly cook for their in-laws. What’s the point of making specific foods if you don’t know why you’re doing it?

In an unwarranted response to that semi-rhetorical question, it will be my humble pleasure to enlighten wired audiences about the histories of a few Mexican holiday foods. Over the next two weeks, in preparation for Dia de Los Muertos , on Nov. 1-2, I am going to try and discover the histories of traditional foods associated with the day, and even attempt to cook a few!