Christmas

One thing that instantly came to mind while thinking about special meals was Christmas breakfast at my house. For as long as I can remember, the actual courses for breakfast have been changed, but it's always included ham. My uncle is always in charge of buying ham for my mother, and she would be in charge of carving and preparing it on Christmas morning. No matter what we had for breakfast, everyone would get some ham, and then again at dinner if other family members came over, we would get more ham.

Even though ham is a pretty common food and we have it more than annually, something about eating ham on Christmas seems like a tradition to me, and I've come to expect it every year at breakfast. In comparison to some of the Asian countries we've discussed, ham differs from their norm, where seafood might be more commonplace, and meat is not very common for people to eat all that often. Japan and India both came to mind, as Japan often has meals that include seafood, and India (due to religious and environmental reasons) has a high population of vegetarians.

I think it definitely speaks for the differences in cultures and how meat is commonplace, but still considered necessary and important (to the point where it has become the main part of my family's meals at Christmas.) However, the importance of ham, or any meat for that matter, definitely differs across various cultures.