India’s Christmas table is a living map of arrivals and exchanges: Portuguese traders, Syrian Christians, colonial encounters, tribal traditions, coastal flavours and mountain kitchens. And the festive season is when families lay out their histories on the table, each dish carrying the story of a place, a migration or a memory.
For all their differences, the flavours converge on one idea: Christmas is a celebration of labour, love and community.
In Goa, Christmas begins weeks before December 25, not with decorations, but with kitchen shifts: coconuts grated, cashews cracked, trays of doce (a festive sweet made with Bengal split gram and fresh coconut) laid out to cure.
“For Goans, Christmas is not a single day; it is a season,” says food historian Odette Mascarenhas. Kuswar, the grand platter of festive sweets, features classics like bebinca (layered Goan coconut milk pudding) and neureos (deep-fried coconut-filled festive pastries), and more rustic preparations such as dodol (sticky, dark jaggery-coconut fudge) and pinagr (a traditional Goan Christmas rice dish).
Mascarenhas emphasises community labour. “Almost every household still makes at least four to five items personally, especially the doce. No shop version can match the texture of the one made at home,” she tells The National.
Savouries offer another layered story: ce
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