As with most conversations here, there were parts of this that felt true and parts that I felt really missed the mark at least from what I see/hear/feel. I totally support the idea that people need to be okay with being in a minority for a view on something. I've been there. I voted for Trump in 2016 as a contrarian vote living in the greater Seattle area (yes, I regret it). I think the push back that I see coming from the far-left is that progressive candidates fail to get support from the establishment Democrat campaign machine. See the refusal to endorse Mamdani even after he won the primary. Which means, we can't have great data on how well they would do. The campaign machinery is important. I don't think progressive candidates everywhere is the answer. And in this space, I've been very vocal that we need to make the Democratic party an actual big tent from Kinzinger pro-democracy true conservatism to Mamdani liberalism. But it does feel to me that the systems in place support more of the status quo, which is Democrats tracking to the center, which I think has harmed the Democrat brand over time because it feels disingenuous, especially as the center has moved more to the right.
I think the thing that stood out for me that I disagree with is about what we think our politicians are to do. Yes, they need to represent their voters, but they also have to be LEADERS. This system of ours has us elect people. It doesn't have us vote on actual policies outside of local initiatives, typically. People are whole texts. And that means that sometimes, they are absolutely in line with their voters...and sometimes, they have to make tough choices about whether to vote with their own views or vote as they imagine their electorate wants them to. It's not an easy balancing act. As citizens and voters, we have to recognize that the people we elect will not agree with us on everything. And that negotiation and compromise is part of the job even when we don't like to see it happen. Politics isn't easy.
Another thing I didn't hear really addressed is the longterm marketing campaign that has equated liberalism to radicalism. I think more people would support progressive policies if they truly engaged with them. But many do not because they automatically equate progressivism and liberalism as radical. When in reality, MAGA is quite radical. MAGA is not truly conservative. I think we tend to throw around terms like liberal, conservative, capitalism, oligarchy, socialism and a wide array of the electorate does not understand what these terms truly mean (or the meaning of the terms has shifted as language does).
When we’re with my family for Christmas we’ll have German food (my grandparents immigrated so we keep the tradition). So, specially-ordered wursts and mashed potatoes and sauerkraut for Christmas eve, German cold cuts, cheeses, and hearty breads for Christmas breakfast. It takes some work to get everything where we live, but it’s worth it.
I live one district over from the Behn/Van Epps race so I was really invested. I really hope dems focus on getting out there and getting folks to actually turn out ahead of 2026, I think those of us left of center are beaten down and a little hopeless living with the Republican supermajority. This race made it feel like there could actually be competition and change.
We have been wildly inconsistent with Christmas eve dinner but my favorite has been individual beef wellingtons with scalloped potatoes, a cranberry walnut salad, and roasted green beans or asparagus (I can’t remember which). We’ve done soup and lasagna too which were fine. We live in a suburb south of Atlanta and all our churches have like 8 Christmas services, so we usually go to the early afternoon one, and then I have some time to cook in the afternoon/early evening.
Usually on Christmas Eve I’ll prep the christmas breakfast casserole which is hot sausage, biscuits, eggs, cheese, and country gravy (I loveeeeee it), if we’re hungry for lunch I’ll make a charcuterie board, and for dinner we do homemade pizzas. I don’t want to make a fancy dinner on Christmas day - I just want to stay in pjs, play with the kids, read, etc. I don’t know if we’ll do that forever but while the kids are young and the holidays take so much energy, this is a win to have a low pressure kind of day. The kids think it’s super fun too. Last year the kids asked to get Jesus a birthday cake, so we got a tiny cake from Publix😂
Back when my grandpa (RIP) still wanted the family Christmas dinner at his house, but Grandma (also RIP) was over dealing with cooking a big meal, we switched to a soup variety for Christmas dinner. It’s especially nice if you’ve already had a lot of food throughout the day before getting to Christmas dinner time. Soups are fairly easy and can be mostly or fully made ahead and heated before serving. There is also a wide variety of options to have with it - veggie & fruit trays, cheese & crackers, some type of bread, small sandwiches, etc.
I'm a big fan of an Italian feast for Christmas Day! A baked pasta like lasagna or rigatoni that you can assemble ahead of time, garlic bread, shrimp scampi, a big Caesar salad. So good!
For Christmas Eve, we've started doing a Shepherd's Dinner picnic under the tree lights. We order out from a different ethnic restaurant every year. I love that I don't have to cook for two big meals in a row, but it still feels meaningful and memorable.
Ok, not that very far in, but I had a thought as I parked at school: When people are polled on progressive policies, they overwhelmingly want those progressive policies. Yet when they are polled on whether they are liberal or conservative, the majority say they are conservative or moderate.
What if we just don't have a good understand of what ANY of those words mean? And what story do we need to be telling across the ideological spectrum?
You might enjoy taking a look at the executive summary of Deciding to Win. I was really fascinated by the mix of "popular" policies. People like a lot of progressive and conservative ideas, it turns out.
Raclette is the answer! Better and easier than fondue. The kids absolutely love this tradition for Christmas Eve, and I can cut everything up ahead of time so it's an easy meal after we go to late afternoon church. Also fun for nye. Christmas day we do swedish meatballs with meat from Ingebretsen's, the cutest little Scandinavian market in Minneapolis. You should check it out for some Minnesota souvenirs when you visit next summer! That's also where we buy our lefsa for the holiday since sadly no one in my family makes it anymore.
Holiday meals! I love this conversation! We have 17 people staying at our house & probably another 30 or so who pass thru on Christmas Eve. Our Christmas Eve meal is anchored by a minestrone style soup (the recipe from our childhood neighbor is titled “ Christmas Tree Soup” & the last line of the recipe says, “sit & eat by the Christmas Tree”). We also have open & bake French breads from a local bakery. Several friends from church, our neighborhood, & even work, stop through & folks bring a heavy appetizer (on or in a disposable dish!) My 12 year old neice likes food prep & cooking so she’s added fun salads or veggie trays or nori rolls since she was about 8.
Christmas morning is breakfast casseroles that “the moms” (there are 3-4 of us in the house) put together late Christmas Eve while drinking eggnogs! Whoever is up first (usually one of the men) pulls them out of the fridge, gets the oven up to temp, & puts the coffee on. Christmas dinner is ham, scallop potatoes, baked Mac & cheese, sweet potato/beet/spinach dish that’s been a family regular for years, & kale salad.
New Year’s Eve we make fresh pasta & NY Day is salad & seafood gumbo! A lot of what we do can be prepped beforehand & dumped together & we are super collaborative across the 4 families who celebrate the holidays together.
For Christmas morning, I use all of the leftover hot dog and hamburger buns and sandwich crusts from the last few years to make an eggnog French toast casserole. Very special and it uses food scraps which makes it feel like I have done something for the earth.
When we lived in the UK we did pheasant for Christmas dinner. Here we do venison, usually a wild rice pilaf, nice green veg, and sweet potatoes of some kind. I just make up the pilaf, adding pecans and cranberries.
Goose is traditional in the UK, but now they mostly do turkey.
We do Chinese takeout from a very nice Chinese restaurant in our area, yes I am spoiled that I have many to chose from, after going to Christmas pageant / Children’s Christmas Mass, morning is casserole with biscuits. When I was growing up we did fancy dinner then did Midnight Mass, got home at 2 am opened presents and you slept in and ate leftovers on Christmas Day
Our Christmas Eve tradition is dinner at a nice restaurant with our Jewish friends because they never have anything to do! All the girls in both families were upset because this year we will still be in Paris through Christmas Day, so we’re moving our dinner to new years.
Ham, scalloped potatoes, and green beans for Christmas dinner. Super easy prep and clean-up. We add specialty cocktails and drinks for those who don’t drink alcohol.
Bonus of the Christmas ham, you get to keep the ham bone and make a catch of ham and beans for New Year’s Day!
We still do Prime Rib for Christmas dinner! Jewel usually has them on sale right before thanksgiving, so we will grab them and freeze them. We also do a brunch for Christmas Eve. I made a croissant berries and cream cheese French toast last year. It was lovely.
We rotate between me making lasagna and crusty garlic bread, and my husband making beef short ribs with gravy and mashed garlic chive potatoes; we make a big fresh salad and a big pan of roasted veggies. I’m a huge fan of something different on Christmas—whatever recipes your family loves that are way too time consuming for standard meals are perfect for celebrations. I also just think this makes good sense because Christmas for my family was always so much about the snacky foods that you nibble on Christmas morning: sausage balls, and cheesy onion rye toast and cinnamon rolls or monkey bread. You get so full in the morning that a later dinner that’s a little fancier but simpler just feels right.
Just tacking on too that lasagna can be fully or partially premade! You can freeze the whole thing or at least slow simmer your delicious homemade sauce ahead of time so you just have to defrost and assemble.
As with most conversations here, there were parts of this that felt true and parts that I felt really missed the mark at least from what I see/hear/feel. I totally support the idea that people need to be okay with being in a minority for a view on something. I've been there. I voted for Trump in 2016 as a contrarian vote living in the greater Seattle area (yes, I regret it). I think the push back that I see coming from the far-left is that progressive candidates fail to get support from the establishment Democrat campaign machine. See the refusal to endorse Mamdani even after he won the primary. Which means, we can't have great data on how well they would do. The campaign machinery is important. I don't think progressive candidates everywhere is the answer. And in this space, I've been very vocal that we need to make the Democratic party an actual big tent from Kinzinger pro-democracy true conservatism to Mamdani liberalism. But it does feel to me that the systems in place support more of the status quo, which is Democrats tracking to the center, which I think has harmed the Democrat brand over time because it feels disingenuous, especially as the center has moved more to the right.
I think the thing that stood out for me that I disagree with is about what we think our politicians are to do. Yes, they need to represent their voters, but they also have to be LEADERS. This system of ours has us elect people. It doesn't have us vote on actual policies outside of local initiatives, typically. People are whole texts. And that means that sometimes, they are absolutely in line with their voters...and sometimes, they have to make tough choices about whether to vote with their own views or vote as they imagine their electorate wants them to. It's not an easy balancing act. As citizens and voters, we have to recognize that the people we elect will not agree with us on everything. And that negotiation and compromise is part of the job even when we don't like to see it happen. Politics isn't easy.
Another thing I didn't hear really addressed is the longterm marketing campaign that has equated liberalism to radicalism. I think more people would support progressive policies if they truly engaged with them. But many do not because they automatically equate progressivism and liberalism as radical. When in reality, MAGA is quite radical. MAGA is not truly conservative. I think we tend to throw around terms like liberal, conservative, capitalism, oligarchy, socialism and a wide array of the electorate does not understand what these terms truly mean (or the meaning of the terms has shifted as language does).
I nearly always make chocolate biscuits near Christmas. Think cinnamon rolls but mini chocolate chips or chopped chocolate. Very yummy!
https://www.bakerella.com/chocolate-swirl-biscuits/
When we’re with my family for Christmas we’ll have German food (my grandparents immigrated so we keep the tradition). So, specially-ordered wursts and mashed potatoes and sauerkraut for Christmas eve, German cold cuts, cheeses, and hearty breads for Christmas breakfast. It takes some work to get everything where we live, but it’s worth it.
I live one district over from the Behn/Van Epps race so I was really invested. I really hope dems focus on getting out there and getting folks to actually turn out ahead of 2026, I think those of us left of center are beaten down and a little hopeless living with the Republican supermajority. This race made it feel like there could actually be competition and change.
We have been wildly inconsistent with Christmas eve dinner but my favorite has been individual beef wellingtons with scalloped potatoes, a cranberry walnut salad, and roasted green beans or asparagus (I can’t remember which). We’ve done soup and lasagna too which were fine. We live in a suburb south of Atlanta and all our churches have like 8 Christmas services, so we usually go to the early afternoon one, and then I have some time to cook in the afternoon/early evening.
Usually on Christmas Eve I’ll prep the christmas breakfast casserole which is hot sausage, biscuits, eggs, cheese, and country gravy (I loveeeeee it), if we’re hungry for lunch I’ll make a charcuterie board, and for dinner we do homemade pizzas. I don’t want to make a fancy dinner on Christmas day - I just want to stay in pjs, play with the kids, read, etc. I don’t know if we’ll do that forever but while the kids are young and the holidays take so much energy, this is a win to have a low pressure kind of day. The kids think it’s super fun too. Last year the kids asked to get Jesus a birthday cake, so we got a tiny cake from Publix😂
Back when my grandpa (RIP) still wanted the family Christmas dinner at his house, but Grandma (also RIP) was over dealing with cooking a big meal, we switched to a soup variety for Christmas dinner. It’s especially nice if you’ve already had a lot of food throughout the day before getting to Christmas dinner time. Soups are fairly easy and can be mostly or fully made ahead and heated before serving. There is also a wide variety of options to have with it - veggie & fruit trays, cheese & crackers, some type of bread, small sandwiches, etc.
I'm a big fan of an Italian feast for Christmas Day! A baked pasta like lasagna or rigatoni that you can assemble ahead of time, garlic bread, shrimp scampi, a big Caesar salad. So good!
For Christmas Eve, we've started doing a Shepherd's Dinner picnic under the tree lights. We order out from a different ethnic restaurant every year. I love that I don't have to cook for two big meals in a row, but it still feels meaningful and memorable.
Ok, not that very far in, but I had a thought as I parked at school: When people are polled on progressive policies, they overwhelmingly want those progressive policies. Yet when they are polled on whether they are liberal or conservative, the majority say they are conservative or moderate.
What if we just don't have a good understand of what ANY of those words mean? And what story do we need to be telling across the ideological spectrum?
You might enjoy taking a look at the executive summary of Deciding to Win. I was really fascinated by the mix of "popular" policies. People like a lot of progressive and conservative ideas, it turns out.
Raclette is the answer! Better and easier than fondue. The kids absolutely love this tradition for Christmas Eve, and I can cut everything up ahead of time so it's an easy meal after we go to late afternoon church. Also fun for nye. Christmas day we do swedish meatballs with meat from Ingebretsen's, the cutest little Scandinavian market in Minneapolis. You should check it out for some Minnesota souvenirs when you visit next summer! That's also where we buy our lefsa for the holiday since sadly no one in my family makes it anymore.
Instant pot butter chicken! With a toasted naan bread, rice (or quinoa), and a big green salad with citrus dressing.
Holiday meals! I love this conversation! We have 17 people staying at our house & probably another 30 or so who pass thru on Christmas Eve. Our Christmas Eve meal is anchored by a minestrone style soup (the recipe from our childhood neighbor is titled “ Christmas Tree Soup” & the last line of the recipe says, “sit & eat by the Christmas Tree”). We also have open & bake French breads from a local bakery. Several friends from church, our neighborhood, & even work, stop through & folks bring a heavy appetizer (on or in a disposable dish!) My 12 year old neice likes food prep & cooking so she’s added fun salads or veggie trays or nori rolls since she was about 8.
Christmas morning is breakfast casseroles that “the moms” (there are 3-4 of us in the house) put together late Christmas Eve while drinking eggnogs! Whoever is up first (usually one of the men) pulls them out of the fridge, gets the oven up to temp, & puts the coffee on. Christmas dinner is ham, scallop potatoes, baked Mac & cheese, sweet potato/beet/spinach dish that’s been a family regular for years, & kale salad.
New Year’s Eve we make fresh pasta & NY Day is salad & seafood gumbo! A lot of what we do can be prepped beforehand & dumped together & we are super collaborative across the 4 families who celebrate the holidays together.
For Christmas morning, I use all of the leftover hot dog and hamburger buns and sandwich crusts from the last few years to make an eggnog French toast casserole. Very special and it uses food scraps which makes it feel like I have done something for the earth.
When we lived in the UK we did pheasant for Christmas dinner. Here we do venison, usually a wild rice pilaf, nice green veg, and sweet potatoes of some kind. I just make up the pilaf, adding pecans and cranberries.
Goose is traditional in the UK, but now they mostly do turkey.
We do Chinese takeout from a very nice Chinese restaurant in our area, yes I am spoiled that I have many to chose from, after going to Christmas pageant / Children’s Christmas Mass, morning is casserole with biscuits. When I was growing up we did fancy dinner then did Midnight Mass, got home at 2 am opened presents and you slept in and ate leftovers on Christmas Day
Our Christmas Eve tradition is dinner at a nice restaurant with our Jewish friends because they never have anything to do! All the girls in both families were upset because this year we will still be in Paris through Christmas Day, so we’re moving our dinner to new years.
Ham, scalloped potatoes, and green beans for Christmas dinner. Super easy prep and clean-up. We add specialty cocktails and drinks for those who don’t drink alcohol.
Bonus of the Christmas ham, you get to keep the ham bone and make a catch of ham and beans for New Year’s Day!
We still do Prime Rib for Christmas dinner! Jewel usually has them on sale right before thanksgiving, so we will grab them and freeze them. We also do a brunch for Christmas Eve. I made a croissant berries and cream cheese French toast last year. It was lovely.
We rotate between me making lasagna and crusty garlic bread, and my husband making beef short ribs with gravy and mashed garlic chive potatoes; we make a big fresh salad and a big pan of roasted veggies. I’m a huge fan of something different on Christmas—whatever recipes your family loves that are way too time consuming for standard meals are perfect for celebrations. I also just think this makes good sense because Christmas for my family was always so much about the snacky foods that you nibble on Christmas morning: sausage balls, and cheesy onion rye toast and cinnamon rolls or monkey bread. You get so full in the morning that a later dinner that’s a little fancier but simpler just feels right.
Just tacking on too that lasagna can be fully or partially premade! You can freeze the whole thing or at least slow simmer your delicious homemade sauce ahead of time so you just have to defrost and assemble.