Are there any foods as rich with nostalgia as those eaten on or around Christmas? Marcel Proust’s epic novel of personal remembrance, In Search of Lost Time, grew to over 3,000 pages following one character’s memory-unlocking bite of a madeleine tea cake; if he’d tasted a bit of honeyed ham instead, I have to think the books would have been three times as long.

For me and my wife this year, the foods of the holiday have taken on the additional flavors of hope and anticipation. That’s because for the first time ever, we will be hosting Christmas in our new house. It feels as though this is the moment for us to decisively take up the baton of our families’ holiday eating traditions, which we adapt and alter to fit our own lives without always realizing how much we’ve changed them.