From the endless tables of the ancestors to the closed holidays, food is the central element of the end of the year celebrations. What we eat has of course changed in Quebec over the years, and the associated costs, just as much.The duty wanted to measure the changes, on the bill as in our imagination, of this highly symbolic culinary exercise.
So is there a traditional Christmas meal that can be compared across the decades? Each family has its answer. We asked culinary historian Michel Lambert to guide our choices in making an archetype.
If there was only one food to remember, he insists, it would be the turkey, which has replaced the goose at the center of our tables. From the Celts to the Romans, the peoples whose traditions we have inherited “associated poultry with light”. “When winter arrives, the birds head south to respect their rhythm. […] And the story of the Christmas party is the rebirth of light, ”explains Mr. Lambert.
The menu tended to vary according to the region of Quebec, he adds, starting with the meat pie, which became cipaille in Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean. It was also transformed on the North Shore and in the Gaspé, where, even if it was nicknamed “tourtière”, it was cooked using fish and seafood.
Pork is also a constant that crosses the ages and our geography, and no piece is rejected. Bacon in the “grate” of Acadians settled in Quebec, including cretons, not to mention sausages or pig’s feet in the famous stew: “a tradition that has remained is to eat all the pork, to do not waste anything, ”emphasizes the scholar.
The traditional meal that we analyzed is thus composed of a turkey weighing six kilograms, two meat pies (each containing 0.5 kg of ground pork), a kilogram of mashed potatoes, just as much. glazed carrots as well as bread and cakes (for which the family would have bought a kilogram of flour). These quantities were determined from traditional recipes.
As a result, the price of the commodities that go into this imagined traditional meal is about three times greater now than forty years ago, in current dollars.
The most reliable food price data for comparison purposes are from Statistics Canada. They span the period from 1980 to 2020. In archival documents, however, it can be established that the 4.54 kg (or 10 lb) “pocket of potatoes” sold for $ 0.30 in 1930 (i.e. $ 4.64 today!), $ 0.24 in 1940 and $ 0.33 in 1950.
And while meat (especially beef) has made headlines for its skyrocketing cost this year, the prices of other foods have also skyrocketed in recent decades. Among those we have selected to cook up a Christmas meal, it is the potato that has made the greatest leap: in 1980, it cost $ 0.41 per kilogram, while last year, we provided it for $ 1.83 / kg, more than four times the price.
More means
There is no point, however, in panicking. The expense is not necessarily greater for families, considering the rise in disposable income and the cost of living.
Since prices are expressed in current dollars, following the method proposed by Statistics Canada, they do not take inflation into account, which is approximately 1 to 3 percent per year.
In addition, the increase in the cost of the Christmas meal closely follows the increase in median (after-tax) household income.
Households have had greater purchasing power each year for forty years, estimates the economist at the University of Sherbrooke François Delorme. “Once you factor in inflation, what I have in my pocket and what I’m able to buy with that has increased by one percent per year since 1976.”
He also cites the participation rate of women, which has added a second source of income to households.
Our exercise, although fun, remains limited. The average household size has decreased since the time Jehane Benoît recommended cooking “2 or 3 turkeys” in his famous Encyclopedia of Canadian Cuisine, first published in 1963. Today, there are fewer than three people in a household, and the siblings who invite each other on New Year’s Eve have also melted away.
Abundance, deprivation and the sense of history
Please note, the increase in purchasing power in general does not mean that everyone has the same means, says François Delorme. “We are talking about overconsumption, but at the same time, it should be remembered that at the moment, there is particularly high attendance at food banks. Inequalities continue to increase, especially within countries. “
“Christmas has become a food festival,” summarizes Geneviève Sicotte, professor of French studies at Concordia University and specialist in imaginary food.
If today, this festival sometimes rhymes with consumerist excess, the cultural historian recalls that until the 1950s and 1960s, it was synonymous with a return to abundance after a certain deprivation. Families had “made sacrifices during Advent to make sure they had a well-stocked table,” she said.
The fatty and plentiful food also made it possible to get through the darkness of December, at a time when the body had not yet fully adapted to the cold.
Beyond the relationship to the wallet, food choices are also indicative of a certain relationship to time. When the preparation of the family’s donuts or stew took days on end, the processing of the ingredients became a veritable “countdown” to Christmas Eve, says Professor Sicotte.
Nor is tradition an immutable truth or “a frozen past,” she continues. It is rather a “process of heritage development, where we create a certain vision of our past and our culinary heritage and we reinvest it”.
Tourtière, “today almost an identity,” she notes, appears for example in the oldest cookbooks, in a game version, but it was not particularly associated with the holiday season.
Even industrial food can take on a traditional dimension, notes Caroline Coulombe, who has studied this aspect of our food history. The important thing is that the meal creates “a sensory universe” having the power to “bring us back to a time when we were naïve and happy, in childhood”.
From canned soups to Jell-O through sandwich bread or aspic, it is a certain fascination for modernity that guides this momentum throughout the XXe century.
In the 1950s and 1960s, industrial food also participated in a form of social distinction. It is sold in town, accessible to paid families and “associated with production in a controlled environment, thanks to the science of nutrition and hygiene”, relates Mme Coulombe.
It has, however, “dispossessed us of a certain relationship with food,” observes Geneviève Sicotte. Now “completely divested of the religious dimension”, Christmas remains all the same, according to the specialist, a privileged moment to “find foods carrying values and meaning”.