Traditional...... well, ever since my Bro and SiL moved "back home" for his last post in the RCAF in the mid-80's, we have had the Christmas feast at their house. Each and every year, SiL begins to prepare in early December. She burns well over 50 dozen cookies and a whack of fruit cakes and makes dessert squares from combinations of stuff that you'd think would explode if mixed.

The meal proper is quite a spread! Not just cold dry turkey. There is cold dry ham and cold dry beef. Just about every veggie you can think of crowds the table, soaking sopping wet in margerine with some laced with honey, spiced mustard, runny Cheese Whiz, whatever seems an appropriate adulteration. There's aspic, and macaroni salads festively displayed with seasonal food colourings, and coleslaw with enough yellow onion in it to make the cheap wine almost drinkable.

Then, the piece de resistance de throat. SiL is modest when she calls it a cheesecake becasue it is much more than that. Imagine a regular cheesecake with a whipped filling mixed in to make it yield five times more volume and enough spice to try to compensate for the lack of cheese taste. This is laid in the mold on top of a graham cracker crust with enough margerine and sugar mixed in to yield a superior strength concrete capable of withstanding all but the finest of heavy duty silverware.

Like I said, it is indeed quite a spread. The only thing missing is something I have come to take as a personal tradition... a 75mg Zantac a half hour before the meal so I can manage to eat a bit of the wonderous fare. It's not polite to just choke on the wine.