Large Fierce Mammal

Eat me. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster)

The season of Yule, wherever and however it may be observed, is one festooned with traditions, not least of which are those affecting food. My own heritage comes from German and English influences, and since my blessed induction into the Polish fold, the flood gates have truly opened!

Celebrations and observances surrounding the Winter Solstice predate recorded history, and many of the culinary traditions included in today’s holiday feasts carry forward ingredients and methods of preparation that remind us of harder times. To me, this is part of the charm; but what is not part of the charm is the introduction of revisionist history into this otherwise mouth watering sequence of events.

I revel in being old enough to have “been there” when certain events transpired, and this coupled with my absolute disdain for revisionism, be it uttered through ignorance or design, routinely gets me up on my hind legs with teeth bared. A big contributor to the frequency of my outbursts is that fount of lower case knowledge and truth known as the internet, but source notwithstanding, I am here today to speak to you on a faux holiday “tradition” involving an ingredient my family has enjoyed from my earliest childhood rememberings, but that is widely held in the current era as THE traditional Maritime holiday feast – the Lobster. Quite simply, it’s not.

Straight away, I will hasten to state that the consumption of Lobster at this time of year has become a big deal, and contributes in no small part to the annual income of many a hard working, death defying Fisherman. I am certainly NOT here to cast aspersions on any of that, nor on what foods individual people or their Clans prefer to consume now, or at any other time of the year. My purpose is to enlighten you, Goode Reader, in the matter of the irksome allegation that holds Lobster to be a historically significant and much anticipated component of the Christmas feast, and has ever been so.

In How Lobster Got Fancy, Daniel Luzer offers this historical, backdrop:

Lobster shells about a house are looked upon as signs of poverty and degradation,” wrote John J. Rowan in 1876. Lobster was an unfamiliar, vaguely disgusting bottom feeding ocean dweller that sort of did (and does) resemble an insect, its distant relative. The very word comes from the Old English loppe, which means spider. People did eat lobster, certainly, but not happily and not, usually, openly. Through the 1940s, for instance, American customers could buy lobster meat in cans (like spam or tuna), and it was a fairly low-priced can at that. In the 19th century, when consumers could buy Boston baked beans for 53 cents a pound, canned lobster sold for just 11 cents a pound. People fed lobster to their cats.

Once commonly referred to as Ocean Cockroach, the Lobster was a perfectly crafted bottom feeder long before the first lawyer dragged its proboscis out of the primordial muck and eschewed honest labour in favour of life as a land dwelling parasite.

I was born in 1957, started elementary school in 1962, and well remember that the children of “poor” families exhibited what I later came to realize was humiliation at coming to school nearly every day with Lobster sandwiches in their lunch boxes. This made no sense to me because my family couldn’t seem to get enough of the critter, which we ate at any time of the year it was available. In his radio and television repair business, it wasn’t unusual for my Father to be paid in produce, fish, Scallops, and Lobster if the work was done for someone with more access to fresh food supplies than cash. We ate well, I loved the flavours, and didn’t understand what poor really meant for quite a spell.

The popularity of Lobster was given a boost after it was discovered that it was best if kept alive until the moment of preparation, rather than cooked from dead as with most other marine and terrestrial food animals.

In North America, the American lobster did not achieve popularity until the mid-19th century, when New Yorkers and Bostonians developed a taste for it, and commercial lobster fisheries only flourished after the development of the lobster smack, a custom-made boat with open holding wells on the deck to keep the lobsters alive during transport. Prior to this time, lobster was considered a mark of poverty or as a food for indentured servants or lower members of society in Maine, Massachusetts, and the Canadian Maritimes, and servants specified in employment agreements that they would not eat lobster more than twice per week. Lobster was also commonly served in prisons, much to the displeasure of inmates. American lobster was initially deemed worthy only of being used as fertilizer or fish bait, and it was not until well into the twentieth century that it was viewed as more than a low-priced canned staple food. ~ Wikipedia

In conclusion then, every Clan must embrace its own traditions. Some to be celebrated in classically historic fashion that may be rigidly preserved or evolve over time, while still others may be born on the spot through the melding of cultural sources and carried forward. There is no sin in this unless the origins are permitted to be obscured through reinvention of the facts.