Two years ago, when I was celebrating my first Christmas with my fiancé (now husband), I wanted to show him a piece of Hungarian traditional Christmas. The problem was that he doesn’t like fish, so our traditional fishermen’s soup was out of the question. And I am not the best at baking, so for a bit, I was stumped. But then, I decided — I will make zserbó cake. Now, if you have any idea about what this cake is, then you know, that baking this as a first-time cake is not a good idea. Especially for someone who managed to mess up muffins in the past. Zserbó is a layered yeast dough cake, and it requires dough rolling. And that, dear readers, is my worst nightmare. Baking is not that much an issue for me any more, if the recipe consists of ‘mix ingredients, pour in pan, bake for x amount of time’. But rolling and stretching dough? I’d rather try Ramsay’s wellington while I am yelled at by Simon Cowell. And yet, I decided, and I was determined. Long story short, the cake was tasty, but it became known as ‘the ugly cake’. In my defence, at the time we had an approximately 35 years old gas oven — there, I made my excuse. Fast-forward to last weekend, I was determined to remake the cake, along with two other Hungarian Christmas staples — pogácsa and hókifli. Because, why not step it up with two more things I never baked before? This time around, all three actually turned out alright, zserbó may still be ‘the ugly cake’, but at least it tastes delicious.
But why am I writing about my disastrous baking endeavours?
My Mom was helping me and baking along with me remotely. It took almost five hours to finish everything, and then there was the clean-up. As we were eating the fruits of my labour with my husband, memories started flooding back. Memories of my childhood Christmases and all the tasty food my Mom and Grandmas made for the family. And that was not only 3 kinds of cakes, it was a whole feast. Soups, salads, fish, meat, cakes, etc. And in amazing quantities as well. Enough food for 8–10 adults, plus leftovers for everyone to take home. And it hit me — I never appreciated how much labour went into making those Christmases be what they were. I never appreciated, or even understood that the women in my family prepared, shopped, baked, cooked, made the table, decorated, served us. And that was only the food. I am not even mentioning the gifts, the greeting cards, etc. So much work for a few hours of arguing about politics, followed by passing out in the living room. So much work for me. I mean for me because I have no siblings, or cousins. I was, am, and will be the only child in my immediate family. Added onto this, my birthday is the 30th of December. And my name day is at the beginning of December. Basically, Christmas revolved around me and most importantly, what I wanted to eat. I’ll never forget my Grandma’s walnut cream cake. I now know how long it takes to make that and my goodness…
So, there it is. Baking some Christmas cakes made me realise how ungrateful I was for all the hard work and care towards me, and that it is too late now. My Grandmas are too old now to work so much for Christmas. My family lives all over the world, and we don’t even get together any more. This is probably one of those moments in life, when you realise that you don’t know what you had until you end up losing it.
At the same time, I have seen a lot of content recently about people spending ridiculous amounts on Christmas decoration, gifts, gift baskets, etc. I feel that there are two somewhat intertwining reasons for this. One is chasing nostalgia, trying to capture the feeling of childhood Christmas, and trying to provide this feeling for the family that children of the 90s now have. I especially notice this among my acquaintances and friends who are from Hungary, Romania, or other Central and Eastern European countries. Because we moved away, and now finally we can afford to have anything we want, or at least more than we got when we were kids. And capitalism makes us buy decorations and useless knick-knacks so that we feel like we created the same feeling we had when we were children. The sad truth is that nostalgia isn’t built on decking out the halls each year with new decoration. It’s actually the opposite, and we feel nostalgic about our childhood Christmas because year by year it was full of the same familiar experiences — the same foods, same smells, same family.
The second reason for the exuberant spending is the constant pressure of the social media filled life we created for ourselves. People constantly feel the need to do bigger, better, more than others. The constant need to prove to people we barely know or don’t know at all that our family is the quaintest, our Christmas dinners are the most scrumptious and our gifts are the best ruins what the whole season is supposed to be about. Not only does this create an endless cycle of people performing for others, but it also creates unbearable pressure on people to perform for their families. And why? Because your family members are also performing for others on social media. They also want to share the best photos of the best-looking Christmas dinner that you made for them. We exploit each other within the closest family unit for social media attention. And this is how 21st century social media society kills families, and friendships. Because what does it all mean in the end, when we all perform for each other and for strangers, but we don’t get good memories and real connections out of it — and in the worst case, we lose something precious that we don’t even notice until it’s too late. Susannah Friesen explains this idea of capitalism and overconsumption ruining Christmas much better than I do — I recommend her video about this.
So what should we do instead of trying to recreate nostalgia through upholding capitalism? Honestly, I am not about to tell anybody what to do. It’s your Christmas, pop off queen. All I know, is that I am going to continue to bake the ugly cake each year and drag my husband to 15 different Christmas fairs around town, and listen to Christmas metal until my ears bleed. And I just hope that when I am 99, and I need help putting on that stupid tree ornament I bought at a time I remember only through hazy memories, I will get to feel the nostalgia.
InkMind 