UT Blog

Christmas makes one think about sharing and taking part. Christmastime includes cooking traditional meals and sitting at the same table with family, relatives, and friends. When in the Christmas mood, people make edible gifts both at home and at work and donate food to those who don’t have much on their table. One of the ancient customs over here that is still followed in some places in the countryside is to bring bread to the animals in the barn on Christmas Eve.

A great film for invoking the Christmas feeling is Babette’s Feast. The film tells a story about how food can both enliven relationships and elevate us, making us spiritually better persons. It is a film about the beauty shared between dinner participants of different cultural backgrounds and moral values, as well as about love for one’s neighbour and redemption. Still, food culture has to do with sharing every day, not only at Christmastime or when other festivities are taking place.

Canadian anthropologist Gillian Crowther stresses that commensality — sharing a meal with someone, eating and drinking together behind the same table — is one of the most important manifestations of sociality in all cultures. Eating together confirms the sense of belonging, being part of a community.

Offering food, no matter how plain, to a stranger is part of elementary hospitality in most cultures. Dinners spent together create and recreate families, friendships, and business relations. Assuring social relationships through food can happen both around the dinner table at home and feasts where those who don’t eat together everyday can meet up. Who’s invited? Who sits next to whom? What do the people around the table talk about, and what themes do they avoid? A shared meal is a social event where thoughts, experiences, and emotions are shared. On a more covert level, acceptance or distance towards other is being expressed, as well as respect or disdain.

In Estonia, buffets and banquets where people are mostly standing have taken the place of so-called “long table parties” (sometimes pejoratively referred to as “the jellied meat parties”). Mumbling folksy songs might not be to everyone’s taste, but a meal shared with large company still has its magic, something one doesn’t experience in fragmented plate-in-the-hand conversations.

Estonian ethnologist Reet Ruumann has pointed out that during those “long table parties” traditional meals are definitely important, but even more important is the way in which collective feasts maintain necessary social relationships. The fact that at bigger parties arranged at home the food is often prepared together – helping others out and having fun – isn’t of minor importance either. Continue reading →