A New Holiday Tradition

I am aware that there are some who go out on Christmas Day for a Chinese meal rather than cook themselves. Because we like to cocoon on Christmas Day with good smells coming from the oven, this never appealed to us. However, the whole family is quite fond of Chinese cuisine so this year we decided to change our Christmas Eve feast to Chinese dim sum. My son-in-law grew up assisting his parents with a Chinese Restaurant and can whip out meat stuffed dumplings and won tons in rapid fashion. So building on these two items of boiled ginger chicken dumplings and fried pork wont tons, we added char siu (barbecue) pork tenderloin, sesame stir fried green beans, szechuan braised eggplant, mu shu pork, yang chow fried rice and shrimp lo mein, all courtesy of the family kitchen. I think this was a successful change from our Jewish deli inspired previous Christma Eve meals of pastrami and corned beef sandwiches. It appears our family is conflicted on which cuisines go best with Christian holidays. But then again, when our oldest daughter got married with Methodists, Catholics and Mormons on one side and Buddhists and Baptists on the other, my daughter compromised and got a Jewish judge to perform the ceremony.