If I could put you inside a time machine and send you to 9 a.m., Christmas, in my girlhood home, most of what you’d find would be unsurprising. My brother and sister and I would be lying on the living room floor, surrounded by wrapping paper and candy foil. Somewhere in another part of the house, you would hear pans rattle. You would take a breath and smell bacon frying and realize that my parents were making breakfast.
You might follow me as I slide into my slippers and wander into the kitchen. You’d hear mom instruct me to fetch something from the pantry or the back porch, and this is where things would get strange. Pressed against the doorway, you’d watch me pop the lid off of a narrow-mouthed canning jar and impel the contents into a saucepan. You’d see me add a hill of sugar, a pat or two of butter, a shake of salt and pepper. You’d see my dad edge the frying pan toward the front so I could tuck my saucepan onto the back burner. You’d watch me try to stay clear of the bacon spatter while I use the spoon like a knife, then like a press, adding flecks of red to the grease on the stove.
My family doesn’t have many Christmas ‘always’: we don’t always have turkey; sometimes we have ham. We don’t always have homemade pumpkin pie or cranberry relish. But I do not remember a Christmas breakfast without tomatoes on toast. It was so regular, so consistently a part of our Christmas morning that I believed it to be a long-standing and worldwide tradition.
As a preteen, the discovery that we were the sole progenies of this dish fit nicely with my newly forming attitude. Mine was a family of freaks and weirdos.
The origins of the meal were unquestioned. Grandma raised eight children, seven during the Great Depression, in a marriage that is most generously described as dysfunctional. Dysfunction, my dad says, is the ethnic and cultural heritage of the dish. Grandma served many meals borne of desperate circumstance, and tomatoes on toast was a common one.
How it came to be revered on Christmas morning may also be the stuff of dysfunction. Somehow, the family culture police got involved. Years of being asked, “Did you have tomatoes on toast for Christmas breakfast?”, accompanied by expectant looks, may have created a sense that we had to do it, just to avoid being the breakfast black sheep. By 1990, it was documented in the family cookbook as the Manser Christmas morning dish. The submission bore the name of my grandmother, who had been dead for 20 years.
If my 12-year-old self had known this, imagine the sarcasm she might have produced. Such an act of artifice, to take a slapped- together necessity food and enshrine it as a special occasion recipe. The zealous and pure outrage of that time has passed, as my twenties and beyond have revealed me to be as error-prone as any of my ancestors. With that, I recognize the tradition as a story about transformation.
In cooking, raw ingredients are changed by seasoning, by brining, by marinating, by applying heat. Grandma was, I’ve heard, good at this process. She could take the little and make it enough, better than enough. Everyone agrees, she was a marvelous cook.
Like his mother, my dad is a good cook. Like his parents, he struggled to have healthy relationships. He wasn’t kidding when he used the word dysfunction to describe his background, and dysfunction is a terrible gift: it continues to give into the next generation, and the next. Dad recognized this, and rather than continue passing that along, he strived to be different. He was good at that process; he continues to be good at that process, and in pursuing change, he gave his kids something better.
A dish served in one tiny kitchen in New Baltimore, Michigan as a way to survive can become special and beautiful. A rough start can be smoothed. As we gather together, the flawed and beloved, we can find ways to honor the good and transform the bad– transform the past into something both savory and sweet. Our lives are affected by hardship. Our lives are affected by dysfunction. But we are not the hardship, and dysfunction can be undone, turned around, made right. We remember, we honor, but we are not doomed by our past. This is something to celebrate at Christmas.
Christmas Morning Tomatoes on Toast
Reprinted from the Manser Family Reunion Cookbook, 1990
1 qt. tomatoes
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. butter
12 slices toast
Heat tomatoes, sugar, and butter; simmer 5 minutes. Place bread on oven rack. Turn on broiler. Toast one side. Flip and toast other side. Or use a regular toaster. Spoon tomatoes on toast.
-Martha