Ah, the holidays. Time to loosen up your belt and get down to some serious eating. There's a reason, after all, that New Year's clean-living resolutions happen when they do, coming on the heels of two big, food-focused holidays in the space of two months.

The seasonal mass feeding gets underway in November with the arrival of Thanksgiving, a celebration of the unique hospitality our forefathers visited upon the native populations and an occasion for most of us to eat ourselves into a tryptophan-induced stupor. Christmas follows and, although there might be peripheral stuff going on like celebrating miracles, don't get distracted: The whole Christmas thing is really about food -- candy canes, eggnog, gingerbread cookies, roast goose, fruitcake, Christmas pudding and so on.

At least that's the way it is in my family. The Italians swinging from my family tree focus on food the way farmers obsess about the weather. Meals are the lifeblood, the sun and the rain, the primum mobile of family life, and there's simply no time of year when meals and food are more important than during the holidays.

At the heart of a traditional Italian Christmas is the religiously inspired Christmas Eve Feast of 13 Fishes (12 apostles plus Jesus = 13. Get it?). Deep, but I sure am glad my parents dropped this from the repertoire at our house (Who really wants to go to bed with a bellyful of fish on Christmas Eve?). Instead, my immediate family ended up focusing on baked goods: Great Grandma Nick's time-worn recipe for anise-flecked twist cookies, an enormous, soft mound of Portuguese sweet bread, fruit-studded stolen, crispy crespelle ... it makes me wonder if my Christmas spirit is really just a high carb haze.

This week CityBeat's fanatical food writers -- you won't find a group of people in this town with more food on the brain -- share their treasured holiday food rituals. It makes for an interesting collage, rooted in traditions across different countries and cultures, from the clichéd Christmas fruitcake to Midwestern popcorn balls to a favorite recipe for cranberry relish. (Craig Bida)

Cookies for Santa
Growing up, my family was never very big on tradition. We ate lasagna for Thanksgiving and sprayed the plastic Christmas tree with pine scent so my brother didn't go into asthmatic shock. But we did indulge in one ritual unwaveringly. Every season my sister, brother and I filled nut-covered thumbprints with yellow and pink icing, and pushed little green Christmas trees out of the cookie press under my mother's watchful eye to leave a plate of cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.

The next morning, waiting in the hall in our robes and fuzzy slippers, we'd screech into the living room and start ripping into the gift-wrapped boxes containing a Mousetrap game, a Mrs. Beasley doll or a boring new shirt. Afterward, exhausted from the frenzy, we'd check out the mysteriously empty dish, never guessing my father had eaten plate after plate of cookies as he sat up all night to construct toys and throw rocks on snow-covered roofs to imitate reindeer hooves.

Each season as I bake chocolate hazelnut shortbreads, cherry-filled rugelach and cranberry cornmeal cookies for my brother (who looks just like my father), I feel nostalgic for the magic created by leftover crumbs and an empty glass of milk. Hmmm, I guess my family is a little more traditional than I thought. (Lora Arduser)

Having a Ball
Around the holidays, my parents' kitchen is a bustle of kinetic, culinary energy. But one food staple of our family holiday season doesn't involve cooking. Arriving in a box from Cleveland, we look forward to Humphrey Popcorn Balls.

The eating of these balls of old-timey goodness tends to coincide with a traditional family game called "the olden days," in which my siblings and I make my parents feel like dinosaurs by asking them what holidays were like in the Dark Ages. The storytelling always revisits my mom's initiation into teenage courting at the Euclid Beach Park, where she got her first kiss (and apparently learned to drive) on the "Dodgem," a bumper car ride, then shared a popcorn ball with her beau.

The Humphrey Popcorn Company owned the park, patterned after New York's Coney Island, from 1901 until it closed in 1969, and their popcorn balls are the best in the world (www.humphreycompany.com). Softball-sized but light and fluffy, they're a perfect combination of sweet and salty, with a fresh corn flavor nothing like the stale versions found elsewhere. The balls roll in for the trick-or-treaters and don't disappear until the last crumbs are vacuumed out of the carpet in January. But not before at least one interactive family activity like popcorn ball wiffle ball, juggling or hand grenades. (Emily Lieb)

The Gift That Keeps On Giving
My grandmother's Christmas cake remains the only tradition that still means anything to me: A large square fruitcake, stuffed with nuts and cherries, steeped in brandy and covered with a deceptively hard layer of white icing shielding the moist, dark brown interior.

The Christmas cake is denser than many metals and sits undigested in the stomach for hours, like a rock. Year after year, by almost imperceptible increments, it has become steadily larger and heavier, and the icing has become harder to crack.

The first Christmas after I moved away to college, my grandmother sent me my own cake. The mailman left it on the front step, perhaps wary of attempting anything further. It must have weighed 25 pounds. My roommates and I were still eating it in February, carving off oddly-shaped pieces. By late March, we were judiciously eating from the non-moldy end, glad that assistance had finally arrived -- in microscopic form -- to help us consume it. Perhaps, we began to wonder, was this a magical cake? Sadly, it was not. And it went, eventually, the way of all things. It was just a huge cake. (Chris Kemp)

Holiday Issue 2005

New Traditions
The Pilgrims moved here to get away from the British, so it's a little ironic to have to blend American Thanksgiving with the traditional British Sunday dinner just to please my Welsh husband. We manage, but it takes a lot of cooking.

There's turkey, of course, but Yorkshire pudding has replaced the stuffing. Roast parsnips had to be added to the side dish list. One year, I even went so far as to make roast potatoes and mashed potatoes -- and I don't even like potatoes!

Through all this, though, I've managed to hang onto my personal favorite: Cranberry Relish with Candied Ginger. It's become my tradition, torn out of Bon Appétit back in the '80s, and it's won the hearts of many who would never touch that cylinder of goop from a can: Combine two 12-ounce bags of cranberries in a saucepan with a cup-and-a-half of sugar, the juice of one orange, one cup water, some of the orange peel, grated fine, and a half cup of candied ginger, chopped. (Use more ginger if you love it.) Stir and bring to a boil, until the cranberries "pop." The original recipe called for adding slivered almonds, although I never do. Chill. Enjoy. (Anne Mitchell)

What About You?
So that's what makes our holidays bright. Now it's your turn. What unique family favorites have you bending over a hot stove this season? What quirky traditions bring your family together? Scribble down your favorite holiday food rituals and send them to cbida@citybeat.com. We'll pick the best ones to include in a future issue. Happy Holidays! ©