Julens mat og måltider - SIFO

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regarded as the most important part, but “spending time with the family.” It
appears that Christmas food and meals in many ways contribute towards realising
family belonging – both as a social link between family members and as
a social reproduction of family identity. The dinner on Christmas Eve is a
meal for the extended family. For most people this means between five and
ten participants (62 percent). Very few people have Christmas Eve dinner together
with friends (4 percent).
Far more women (67 percent) than men (21 percent) cook dinner on Christmas
Eve. When we study the division of labour more closely, it seems to follow
some sort of ”hunter and gatherer” pattern. The man’s job is often to prepare
and serve the pork or mutton. The women take care of the side dishes and
trimmings. It also seems as if the many ”invisible” chores to a large extent are
women’s work; cleaning the silverware, cleaning the kitchen drawers, ironing
the Christmas table cloth, laying the table, heating the pork patties, making
the mashed vegetables, cooking the potatoes, cleaning and taking care of the
leftovers.
Even though the Christmas dinner can hardly be characterised as a culinary
feat, it still entails extensive ritual and practical work. From the qualitative
descriptions it is evident that younger women express reluctance to take on
the laborious and responsibility-laden role as hostess. Women are often well
into their thirties before they make their debut as hostesses on Christmas Eve,
and mature women rule in Norwegian Christmas kitchens. The typical Norwegian
Christmas manager is found in the age group 40-49.
In the choice of Christmas food, the Christmas host and hostess must decide
not only what should be served, but also how to prepare the food. A crucial
issue in this respect is to what extent Christmas food should be ”made from
scratch”. Convenience food generally has lower food cultural status than
home cooked meals. However, the sales figures for industrial Christmas food
products indicate that people increasingly have relaxed the requirement that
Christmas dinners should be ”made from scratch”. One aspect that seems to
make the choice of convenience food acceptable is that Christmas food and
meals require a lot of work. Producers and marketing departments also put a
lot of effort into giving such products higher status.
As a concluding remark we could say that through our choices of Christmas
food we demonstrate many of our social and cultural values – while the smell
of pork ribs and ribs of mutton is associated with ”the right”, the smell of
”Grandis” (slang for Pizza Grandiosa, the most sold frozen pizza in Norway)
is associated with ”the wrong”: ”It smells of spruce sprigs and Grandis; as