Nearly every society banishes the dark of winter with festivals of joy and light, accompanied by foods imbued with cultural meanings, and Christmas is no exception. Cathy Kaufman will talk about the background and history of some of these practices, such as the many Christmas festivities that can be traced to pre-Christian societies and the many sweets that have cultural resonance because they symbolize other ways of combating darkness (the bûche de noel), expressing imperialism and power (the plum pudding), or embodying Christian ideology (the Provençal “thirteen desserts” and candy canes). Traditional feasts, too, harken back to religious tenets, whether the Italian feast of the seven fishes and the French Réveillon or the now-classic Dickensian turkey dinner.

The presentation will be preceded by a reception with tastes of traditional Christmas foods such as Twelfth Night cake and brandade de morue.

Cathy Kaufman, an adjunct professor of Food Studies at The New School, is the chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, the annual international conference at Oxford University, and was the longtime chair of the Culinary Historians of New York. She was the senior editor of Savoring Gotham, a history of food and drink in New York City, published by the Oxford University Press, as well as one of the senior editors of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, also published by the OUP. She is the author of Cooking in Ancient Civilizations (Greenwood Press).