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Meeting at a common table on the occasion of a family lunch or dinner is a rare moment in our lives when family members come together to feel like a single whole or realize that the bonds are not as strong as they used to be. Tell me how you have dinner, and I will tell you what kind of family you have …
The heart of family life
Our conversations at home are for the most part dialogues: between husband and wife, between children, or between parent and child. Breakfast, lunch or dinner – that’s what can finally connect all the home together. A joint meal becomes a real frame of family life. Just as a couple is often born during a romantic dinner, the family is built around common meetings at the table. This circumstance sometimes causes a lot of trouble for the mother of the family: when going shopping, she must choose products, and this is a much more responsible task than it might seem at first glance. Plunging into thoughts about the tastes and preferences of everyone and at the same time taking into account health benefits, the mother in advance, imagining future scenes at the table, begins to build an event that forms the center of a common life.
Everyone has their own recipes
In modern society, where the personal happiness of an individual is considered an unconditional value, everyday habits, including eating, are also very individual: everyone eats according to their taste, when and where it is convenient for them. Emancipated women now spend much less time in the kitchen and do not want their life to be reduced to the role of mother-nurse. At the same time, the more autonomously we live, the more importance we attach to those moments when the family gets together. It can be, for example, Saturday dinner or Sunday lunch.
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For some families, the most important thing is just to be with each other, even if there are warmed semi-finished products on the table. In others, great importance is attached to the culinary contribution to this meeting of one of the family members – each time he prepares a dish whose recipe has been passed down from generation to generation. This variety of customs is a sign of the new time, everyone has their own recipes, their own rituals, the meaning of which is “to be a family”. It is not so important with what frequency and regularity the family gathers at the same table, the main thing is the emotional richness of these meetings, the atmosphere, the feeling of unity. Such common dinners are especially important in families where one of the parents has remarried and a new large family has arisen with children and relatives from different unions. In this case, general meetings do not happen so often, but great expectations are placed on them, and a meal shared with new relatives plays a partly symbolic role.
TV: threat of invasion
Sometimes lunch takes quite a long time. At the same time, we find ourselves in a very close neighborhood: opposite each other, eye to eye. The need to talk at the table can be perceived as a compulsion, for example, in the case of adolescents, who often want to avoid communication with relatives and behave independently. Turning on the TV can to some extent defuse the situation, relieve tension and help find topics for conversation. Dinner, where everyone watches a movie, can also be more relaxed.
However, be careful: if the TV becomes the center of your table (the chairs are arranged accordingly, the volume is turned up), then things are bad … This picture can often be observed when grown-up children leave their parental nest: a glowing screen masks the emptiness that arose with their departure. Vigilance is important here: the habit of “dining under the TV” is very difficult to get rid of.
Finest hour of children
Even some 50 years ago, children almost did not have the right to talk at the table. Today we are seeing the opposite extreme. As soon as the child begins to babble something, he is immediately assigned the main role, he turns into a star and an object of everyone’s attention. Thus, he gets the opportunity to know how he is perceived. He is a klutz, whom everyone laughs at, or a merry fellow, a liar or a braggart. Family dinner is a small performance. Everyone demonstrates his character in accordance with the accepted role. Not everyone and not always feel comfortable with it. For example, a feast where unbridled laughter reigns and wit competes can be painful for shy people. They feel overwhelmed and spend the entire meal wondering if they can get a single word in.
Conversation, not interrogation
The conversation at the table plays an extremely important role – provided that it does not turn into an interrogation. I have often seen how during meals parents bring up unpleasant topics, talk about problems with discipline, ask about unfinished lessons, or ask the traditional question that, as a rule, does not cause any enthusiasm in children: “Well, how are things at school?” Such questions or discussions can break the soft family cocoon in which we all regress a little, disturb the feeling of coziness and comfort, almost like in a mother’s womb, visiting us when we really feel good together. To preserve this possibility of happy moments spent together, the family meal must remain a place of calm, unsophisticated and enriching conversation.