This year’s Érudit Christmas card was designed by Myriam Bourbeau, to whom we extend our warmest thanks.
As 2024 draws to a close, the Érudit team would like to wish you, dear readers, a very happy holiday season.
A successful holiday season is nothing without the main meal that defines it. But what makes such an event a success? Perhaps it’s the quality of the food. Indeed, don’t forget to put on your best smile when a plate full of cretons, a traditional dish of French-Canadian culture, appears on the table. Or maybe it’s the family conviviality? Take a moment to observe the social dynamics at the dining table. Can your sociologist’s eye explain the tensions between your father and his brother-in-law? If the evening starts to drags on, why not launch into a reasonable discussion on the colonial history of the holiday meal?
Whatever the nature of your traditions – and whatever your opinion in the raging debate between tourtière and meat pie – the secret ingredient of a successful meal is always the joy of getting together.
To keep you entertained over the next few weeks, we’ve put together a selection of articles about the holiday meal, its history and its many variations. At times cultural, at others scholarly, these texts are sure to satisfy your appetite until the New Year!
Discover our assortment of texts
La table des Fêtes à l’époque coloniale
Benoît, Jehane. Vie des Arts, Number 21, Noël 1960, p. 44–47.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/55208ac [in French only]
La mémoire passe à table
Douville, Judith. Continuité, Number 130, Fall 2011, p. 32–35.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/65398ac [in French only]
Impossible
Lachapelle, Évelyne. Cahiers franco-canadiens de l’Ouest, Volume 23, Number 1-2, 2011, p. 133–135.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1017264ar [in French only]
Le temps et la fête dans la vie sociale
Lemieux, Denise. Recherches sociographiques, Volume 7, Number 3, 1966, p. 281–304.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/055319ar [in French only]
Neige et Citrouille: Marché Atwater and Seasonality
Newman, Lenore. Cuizine, Volume 3, Number 2, 2012.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1012453ar
Tourtière and Cretons: Celebratory French-Canadian Meat Dishes in Today’s New England
Merrill, Kristen. Cuizine, Volume 4, Number 2, 2013.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1019322ar
Au menu du réveillon
Mongrain-Dontigny, Micheline. Cap-aux-Diamants, Number 47, Fall 1996, p. 34–38.
https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/8236ac [in French only]
For further holiday entertainment, we also suggest you check out this master’s thesis on Quebec’s culinary heritage. We would like to remind our readers that Érudit provides centralized access to the thesis and dissertation repositories of several Canadian universities.
Les pratiques alimentaires du réveillon de Noël contemporain au Bas-Saint-Laurent : la cohabitation entre tradition et modernité
Redmond Morissette, Maude 2008. Université Laval, master’s thesis