Arrangements were being made for Christmas Day, with the usual moving parts to slot together: cousins flying in from North America on Christmas Eve who will probably be jet-lagged, cousins flying out to Europe on Christmas night who don’t want a big day, cousins going to the in-laws this year and can’t make it anyway.
Pea and basil tart: perfect for a vegan Christmas dinner.Credit:Dan Lepard
And by the way, some old friends from Scandinavia who are visiting Melbourne might drop in: more than welcome; didn’t they invent Christmas?
With their two teenagers (no problem).
Who are vegans …
Now, I respect people’s choices about the food they put in their bodies and its impact on the planet. I realise social occasions with omnivores must be awkward if you only eat plants. And I know we owe strangers our hospitality, at no time more so than Christmas.
But hospitality is a two-way street, to be offered generously and accepted graciously. While it’s good to know about people’s food issues, there’s a limit, right? And the limit is Christmas: “vegan” and “Christmas” just don’t belong in the same room.
The whole point of Christmas food is to fill yourself to bursting with animal protein: it’s a mid-winter feast in the northern hemisphere when people fortify themselves against the cold, and a celebration of nature’s bounty in the southern summer.
So I guess you have to feel sorry for vegans on this most flesh-eating of feast days, tip-toeing around the turkey and feeling hassled by the ham. I’m sure they get left out at many dinner parties, but let’s be honest: tofu and lentils just don’t cut it on December 25.
It’s not as if Australians can’t adapt all kinds of cuisine to Christmas dinner. We do seafood instead of turkey, barbecue instead of roast, Middle Eastern instead of middle Europe.
But subbing out the meat and the fish and the cheese and the cream for the purely plant-based? I think not.
Yes, there is vegan ham and tofu turkey, but eating that while your neighbour gorges on the glistening, caramel-crusted real thing involves more self-deception than I can stomach.
So I’m not sure what the plan is for the teenage vegans. There will be nuts on the cheese platter, and someone is bound to turn up with a quinoa salad. Maybe they will bring their own lentil burgers.
And one of the uncles does a very tasty nut loaf every year. You can barely tell it’s not meat. I will even have a slice myself – just in the spirit of Christmas.
Matt Holden is an Age columnist.
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