Indian food is the best kind of food.

These aren’t my words but those of my mother. All my life, as I substituted salads for her cooking in an attempt to lose weight, she’d convince everyone at the table that I would never achieve my desired results until I started eating Indian food for every meal, every day. So, I rebelled, completely ditching my diet. I asked my dad, who was more open to a multicultural palette, if we could eat somewhere non-Indian.

I took my parents to eat some Thai, which has slightly similar flavours to Indian. My mum said she could make it at home. I took my parents to Chili’s to have some nachos. My mum said she could make it at home. I took my parents out for pasta at the best Italian restaurant in town. My mum said she could make it at home. I snapped. I challenged my mum to forego her regular schedule of cooking daal and rice to baking a batch of nachos. What happened next blew my mind.

The following evening, my mum offered up a piping hot baking tray of crisp tortilla chips topped with salsa, cheese, green peppers, black olives, grilled corn and…RAJMA. Yes, rajma! For those of you who don’t know, rajma is a north Indian curry made of red kidney beans, tomato pasta, onions and a heavenly mix of herbs and spice. These were, hands down, the best nachos I had ever had. My taste buds were changed forever.

My mum and her sister added rajma instead of refried beans to tacos, nachos and quesadillas. They added turmeric powder and mustard seeds to pasta sauce to create a dish they liked to call “curry penne.” They even added curry powder and potatoes to pizzas. Maybe this was so that we kids never lost our love for Indian food, or maybe it was a diabolical scheme to never let our taste buds get tainted by other cuisines.Whatever their plan was, it worked.

I realized that if a meal does not make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up from fear of being burned off, it just wasn’t good enough. I add garam masala to my ramen noodles and my pizza sauce is never spicy enough. When I lived in the Middle East, I got hooked onto furiously hot Indo-Chinese and Hakka food. Now, I can’t have Cantonese without wrinkling my nose. This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate a well made plate of pasta, but if someone placed some rotini with curried eggplant and a side of tempura crusted paneer in front of me, I’d like it a lot better than margherita anything. My sister can’t seem to stop making deep fried samosas filled with tofu. And neither of us can get enough of those gosh darn rajma nachos, which my mum kindly stashes in my freezer.

I can now see how, after years of taste-bud-modification to Indian food, my family feels that anything that isn’t doused in mustard and ghee is completely tasteless. I think this Indian + All-Other-Cuisines hybrid is a great way for anyone to ease into full-fledged curry indulgence. My sister and I are prepping our stomachs for a big family reunion coming up in July in India. To my family, the most important sign of good health is the ability to eat a five course spicy meal while squabbling as family members pile everything onto my plate as if I am going to attack it like a champ. We are going to make our aunties and uncles oh so proud.

If you want a taste of the Thanki Sisters’ daily diet, here’s my advice to you: the next time you make a sandwich, line it with green chutney and put some baked potatoes in there, throw it on a pan and grill it, dip it in some spicy ketchup, take a big bite and then tell my mum how good that was. She’ll show you a whole culinary world you never knew existed.

I am not, however, religious. In fact, I don’t even consider myself a Christian.

Growing up, Christmas was always a big deal. We did the presents and the decorations and the big dinners. We also talk about Jesus and grace and salvation, and sometimes go to church. But in spite of my personal beliefs—I’m agnostic—I can’t imagine turning my back on this part of our celebrations because of how closely Christianity is entwined with my West Indian/South American background.

For most of my family, their faith is a big deal. When I go off about my problems, I’m always told that prayer will help solve them. My nana’s house is covered with plaques and needlepoint canvases declaring prayers and proverbs, and just this morning, one of my Catholic uncle’s religious tweets showed up on my timeline. My grandparents still head out to church religiously (pun intended), as do my mother and her husband. Because the church is where the action happens. It’s a gathering place not only for worship, but also for sharing everything from food to gossip, and socializing. It’s also one of the easiest ways to meet people from similar backgrounds and experiences. I remember going to my grandfather’s church in Montreal when I was a kid, and being amazed by the number of people who shared his thick Bajan accent. The church is more of a meeting place for immigrant Canadians than any city-run community centre.

Some of my non-believer friends laugh at those as devout as my relatives, and denounce their beliefs and practices as foolish, out-dated and plebeian. I typically pass on the condescension. I don’t much care about what others choose to believe unless they engage me in a conversation about it, and spreading the gospel of non-belief doesn’t interest me. Maybe it’s because my Christian upbringing didn’t leave me scarred, immature or unable of critical thought. (In fact, I learned recitation and public speaking the time I had to memorize Psalm 23 for Sunday school, and my first mildly philosophical debate was over the role of the Devil in Christianity when I was in grade school. And honestly, backpacking through Europe would have been nowhere near as exciting had I not been exposed to so much of the Bible.)

Tonight my mum’s side may or may not head to church for some sort of service since the church is closed tomorrow. If not, we’ll just settle for an extended grace complete with the usual “amens” interjected from across the table. A small part of me wants to roll my eyes and stay home, but once again I’ll just go with it for the sake of tradition and culture. Besides, it makes my family happy to have me involved with their celebrations. I don’t think you need to believe in Jesus to take pleasure in that.

- Allyssia Alleyne

Renee Sylvestre-Williams demonstrates how to make a Trinidadian treat, pastelles.

Denise Balkissoon wishes she wasn’t so tortured about Christmas, but she is. “My Muslim relatives began to make the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. They became much more devout, and there went half my presents. Meanwhile, my Christian, Hindu and agnostic relatives realized that the size of our family was bankrupting everyone. There went the other half….Soon, putting up the (fake) tree just seemed like work. One year, we decorated a plant in the hallway instead.”

A half-Jewish Jew, Justine Purcell Cowell just wants in. “How I marveled at the sweaters and make-up that emerged from their magical trees. (And oh, how I borrowed those sweaters, how I shared in the joy of that make-up!)….Hanukkah is not Christmas. It’s the compensatory holiday that Jewish parents give to their children. “

Also in is Navneet Alang. He’s going to kick back and enjoy a white Christmas. “Mad rushing to get presents? Check. Grand Christmas feast with a turkey and all the trimmings? Check. Indulging in icewine and gorgonzola in front of the fire like they do on those Food TV specials? Super-gluttonous, you-best-believe-it check. Yeah, when it comes to late December, we are the Christmasiest Punjabis this side of a… Gurdwara at the North Pole?”

“I don’t blame my parents for not lying to me. How were they to know that was what parents here did? Who would assume the truth — that the population of an entire continent could knowingly be partaking in a conspiratorial deception employed to manipulate the mass psyche of their very own offspring?” Shed a tear for Simon Yau, whose parents never encouraged him to believe in Santa Claus.

Kelli Korducki highlights the Christmas differences between Gringo and non-Gringo Catholics. “At my maternal grandparents’ house…another dozen or so relatives insisted we eat yet again, open more presents, and watch Spanish-language Christmas specials that inevitably featured some combination of music and buxom dancers dressed as either sexy Santas or naughty elves. A couple of hours later, my brothers and I would be ripped away from Telemundo‘s hypnotic gyrations and herded into my parents’ minivan—overtired and sugar crashed—to get to the church in time for midnight Mass.”

So I’m not torn about celebrating Christmas. I just don’t get religious about it. I’m more about the goodwill to all men/do I have to go to midnight mass because I really don’t want to/I hate the mall/after working retail for five years Boxing Day is evil state of mind.

The food, on the other hand, makes me happy.

Every year we make pastelles for Christmas. It’s an essential food item in the Christmas food repertoire along with sorrel and black cake.

What is a pastelle? The best way to describe it is a tamale. It’s made with corn meal and stuffed with a mixture of meat, olives, raisins and capers. It’s wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. I like them because they’re delicious, obviously and I like unwrapping them. They’re like little food presents.

Making pastelles is a tedious process. This year my mother and I made almost 120 pastelles. It took us five hours, six if you include cleaning up.

Below are two videos that show you how to make pastelles, courtesy of my parents. I’m not going to put a recipe here because while the basic recipe is the same, every Trinidadian does it differently.

Last year about this time, I went to visit a friend with a new baby. It was a visit that has scarred me for life. First, I called the baby by the wrong name. Then, I said what I was getting my partner for Christmas in that voice that means “and what are you getting your partner for Christmas?” My friend told me what she got him for Hanukkah because, like, they’re Jewish. After years—nay, decades—of resisting Christmas assimilation, I had fallen prey to its insidious tentacles. I was mortified.

I wish I wasn’t so tortured by Christmas, but I am. My family has always played fast and loose with the holiday. Meet Raggedy Anne, who I got when I was four. My dad’s job had taken my family to Saudi Arabia, which is not a place known for sales of Christmas wrapping paper; I found Anne behind the curtains in the living room. Back in Canada, most of my 20 aunts and 19 uncles (crazy, right?) gave out presents, but I had 50 or so first cousins (totally crazy, right?) who also needed something to unwrap. My haul was big, but fairly budget.

Around my tween years, my Muslim relatives began to make the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. They became much more devout, and there went half my presents. Meanwhile, my Christian, Hindu and agnostic relatives realized that the size of our family was bankrupting everyone. There went the other half. Since Christmas didn’t actually mean anything to my immediately family (we’re the agnostic-est), adherence to prescribed rituals petered off. After my mom survived cancer, she asked that we donate to charity rather than exchange gifts. Soon, putting up the (fake) tree just seemed like work. One year, we decorated a plant in the hallway instead.

The end of presents was the death knell for any connection that I had with the Christmas masses. I’ve spent years without entering the mall in December. This is amazing for my mental health, and has instilled in me an annoyance for the ubiquity (and, not to get all Kalle Lasn here, the unfettered consumerism) of the season. You can’t buy a box of tampons these days without Mariah and the Biebs crooning about the joy at hand. Listen, can you hear it? The tinkling sleighbells, the laughter of children, the throbbing CHRISTMAS-CHRISTMAS-CHRISTMAS pulse of compulsory socialization.

Let me tell you, people get way judgey about how the holidays should go down. When I say my fam doesn’t do presents, some people look like they want to cry. Back when we did gifts but skipped the tree, a friend’s mom remarked “Presents? That’s your Christmas?” in a straight-up mean girl voice. This from a hardcore second-wave feminist with little respect for J.C. (the church is a bastion of patriarchy, duh). I’m personally a proponent of putting Christ back into Christmas—otherwise, what is all this about, again? But what do I know, I don’t even have a tree.

I asked my mom once why she’d ever done Christmas in the first place, since her family was never Christian. She said it was about being Canadian, about assimilating and getting into the holiday spirit. Putting up a tree and unwrapping presents didn’t make you Christian. It made you a good sport. Fair enough, but Toronto was more homogenous when she got here, and assimilation isn’t the way we do it this millennium.  Apologies if you’ve heard me say this before, but it’s super annoying to me that charities push their message so hard this month, then freak out if donations are less than last year. Muslims are big into food donations at Eid, and everybody likes to throw money around at their respective new years. Pay attention.

Now I’ve married into a family who does do December 25, so I’m back in the game. I slough off most of the shopping, but I do a mean Kraft-paper wrapping job (mockery of which by my brother-in-law is now my own special tradition). I jiggle babies, and stir stuff, and encourage my hosts to open the wine I’ve brought and save their homemade stuff for themselves. The best part is when my mother-in-law breaks out a selection of the 300 or so cookies she makes every year—most are sold at her church bazaar, but she saves us the green-icing topped butterscotch squares.

Yeah, it’s pretty much good times. I am overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity, and confused about why exactly I am so blessed. And I hope to never again forget that not everyone in this country does the Christmas thing, and that’s actually what I like about it here.

There is a 20-foot Christmas tree in the lobby of my condo. Fabulous, right? But being the half-Jewish Jew that I am, my response is two-fold. First, that beautiful glitz and gold sends a chill of childlike wonder through me. Second, it makes me curious about who decided our condo was Christian. Was there a juried vote? More likely there wasn’t much thought put into it.

It’s not like it would make my heart sing to see a menorah there beside that giant tree. It wouldn’t, maybe because Hanukkah is not a major holiday in the Jewish Calendar.

Even my rabbi said so. It’s a minor holiday that got elevated (okay, rabbi didn’t say this next part) in order to compete with offer us something that at least tries to be fun at Christmas time, seeing as we get denied the sackfuls of jolly-given gifts and the decorative support of every mall in North America.

It’s a confusing time for me. While I do enjoy a good latke, and I think menorahs are cool, Christmas has always had an exotic allure. Growing up in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Thornhill, everything was reversed: Christmas was the odd holiday out with only about one house in twenty covered in lights. “Christmas” was something for the people in those houses, something extraneous.

But that was a Truman Show effect, and it wore off at about the same time that young Christians stopped believing in Santa Claus. By age 13, I was all wised up and wondering who tried to pass off these no-name brand December festivities for the recognizable fancy brand the rest of the world has. That’s probably when I started paying more attention to the friends who celebrated Christmas.

And man, did they ever celebrate Christmas.

How I marveled at the sweaters and make-up that emerged from their magical trees. (And oh, how I borrowed those sweaters, how I shared in the joy of that make-up!) I liked turkey, and family, and presents. Some part of me definitely wanted in.

Hanukkah is not Christmas. It’s the compensatory holiday that Jewish parents give to their children. And the truth is, yeah, sometimes it stings a bit to not be a part of that other intensely celebrated ritual that spans from Halloween to New Year’s. But whichever way I try to hide it – whether with a defensive plug for Hanukkah or an aloof shrug – ­the truth is that I’d like to find my name on a tag under your Christmas tree.

So next time you’re wondering why you have to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and why everyone is so against this wonderful time of year, think of it this way: Christmas is awesome, and it’s all for you. But for the people who didn’t grow up with Santa or trees or festive holiday traditions, it’s a weird time that we flounder through, enjoying vicariously perhaps, compensating with other things, or ducking out and hoping it just goes away quickly. In short, some of us just don’t get it –because we never had it.

I think it’s time for Christians to start seeing their most choice holiday as unique, deserving to be shared, and dare I say it – something that many could probably use some education on the ins and outs of (like, what’s the deal with fruitcake?).

For me and the 20-foot tree in my lobby, it’s really not about religious inclusivity – it’s more about individual inclusivity. Not in that condescending oh-mi-gosh you never had Christmas way, but in that hey, Christmas is amazeballs in my neck of the woods, and you really need to experience it.

In other words… invite a Jew/Muslim/Hindu/Sikh/Heathen over for some part of your Christmas.

I guarantee they will say yes. And we’ll all be better people for it.

Launching at the Gladstone this Tuesday, December 6, is One Millionth Tower, the latest installment of Highrise, the NFB’s webstravaganza (wait, I hate made-up words. Sorry). If you haven’t seen the site yet, you know nothing about Toronto, since the Emmy-award winning project is the best bit of storytelling yet produced about the 1,000 highrise towers in Toronto’s outer suburbs, and the ten of thousands of people who live there.

Luckily, director Katarina Cizek has been doing a cracking job. The first installment, The Thousandth Tower, took us into the lives of six Torontonians who live in these vertical communities. Since then, she’s led planners, architects, musicians and many, many enthusiastic residents in putting together a next-level web project that looks at towers all over the world.

The new segment, One Millionth Tower, re-imagines what life could be like for the residents of two adjacent towers on Kipling Ave. It’s fun and energizing to walk through the virtual landscape – and Owen Pallet and Jim Guthrie helped with the soundtrack. In inspiring the hundreds of people who live here to imagine life with a vegetable garden or a dance studio, Highrise has helped instigate actual change: last summer, residents and a local charity got together to build a playground to replace a desolate and decrepit basketball court.

This is a global issue – the Highrise site points out that over a billion people worldwide live in mid-century apartment buildings that are starting to develop serious repair issues. As much as Toronto’s brown 1970s towers might be eyesores, it’s unrealistic to talk of tearing them down and replacing the majority of the city’s affordable rental housing stock (and, you know, condescending to the people that live there). But we do have to figure something out – as the United Way’s Vertical Poverty report points out, these complexes are troubled, structurally and economically. Many are out in the outer suburbs, where new immigrants and low-income communities become increasingly isolated as public transit gets increasingly crappy.

So far, Mayor Rob Ford hasn’t made an official statement about the future of the Tower Renewal project. Let’s hope that no news is good news. – Denise Balkissoon

Bonjour! Ni hao ma?! Aap aaj kya kar rahe ho? 

Ah, languages… In Toronto, we can hear dozens of them just walking down the street – and maybe speak 2 or 3 (or six?) of them ourselves. It’s glorious, it’s messy, and it’s what we’re talking about on the Ethnic Aisle. From struggles to fit in to the joys of multilingualism, we’re all about words this week. And, er… here are some more!

Denise Balkissoon takes us through some hilarious how-to vids for learning accents.

Why does Navneet Alang feel guilty laughing at Russell Peters doing “accent jokes”? He doesn’t know, but is trying to find out.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams thinks of her accents as tools for different situations – but finds there’s an emotional aspect to them, too.

And here’s Navneet Alang again, this time on how it’s sorta’ sad that he can’t talk to his parents and extended family in their own native tongues.