Dining on Tradition
Joanne L. Canda on How Using Great-Grandmother's China Has Made Us a Godlier Family
I love setting our family table with Great-grandmother's old china on Sundays and special family occasions. It might be my girlie self; in fact, I know it is. My husband has always wondered about a wife who lights candles and sets out wildflowers for picnics and on camping trips. But my being a practicing Christian woman might have a hand in this habit also. Allow me to explain.
To our forebears, acquiring valuable china and silver flatware was worth the financial sacrifice because setting a beautiful table did not just mean flowers and napkins. There was emotional and cultural weight to a formal table setting. Family and friends were invited to share what was the very best to be offered. You would dress nicely for a Sunday or holiday dinner, and so the table was dressed nicely, too. There would be a certain formality about what on other days were common activities. The idea was not to intimidate the table guests but to honor them, to create something special for those who were special to the host and hostess. These meals were significant occasions, and so they began with the lighting of candles and prayer.
During my childhood, these special dinners took place once a month with our grandparents. Three generations, with their three different outlooks on life, came together for a few hours to build memories for the future and to understand the past better. More than anything else, the purpose was to build relationships and to spread love among the generations at the table. Because these memories are so important to me, and because I see some transcendent significance in what happens at a family dinner table, my husband and I continue this custom, even though we are the grandparents now, not the children at the table.
Something Holy Taking Place
My friends tell me I am out of step. Well, I am used to being out of step, to being an old-fashioned Anglican woman in a praise-band world. One day I decided to think about how these dinners and liturgical worship are related. I believe there is something holy about sitting down at a table where the food has been blessed by the head of the family. The father of a family is a sort of priest to his wife and children. Something holy takes place when a family and its friends gather to consume a feast thus begun.
It was while studying dogmatic theology that I first got a glimmer of why the "good china" is a better choice than everyday dishes for these meals. I learned that, when possible, the vessels that hold the bread and wine in the liturgy are to be made of precious metals. At first, I recoiled from that, because many poor people could be fed with the money expended on such vessels. But then I realized that I was falling into the same mistake Jesus' disciples made during the visit to the home of Simon the leper (Matt. 26:6–13). A woman came in and poured very expensive ointment over Jesus' head. The disciples were offended, because the ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor. But Jesus rebuked them, saying that the woman had done a good work because he, Jesus, was with them. When we use precious metals to hold the elements of the Eucharist, we are affirming that "he is with us."
A dinner party does not insult God when it is served on paper plates, but a certain gravitas is added to a meal when it is served on something valuable. China is breakable. By sharing it with your family and friends, you are subtly telling them that the occasion is important enough to risk having a piece break. You are honoring those whom you have invited to the table.
These dinners also affirm family connections in an age when the very meaning of marriage has been so widely denigrated. Until recently, nearly everyone saw marriage as the union of two complementary sexes. For Christians, it was particularly special in that it held four things in common with our sacramental relationship with Christ our Savior: it was intimate, permanent, sacrificial, and life-giving (Brant Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, p. 8).
In our house, we still believe those things about Christian marriage. And so we re-affirm our bond by treating our family to meals together in the best way we can. A special, sit-down family dinner where grace is said affirms how special family is to us. Just as we believe the sacraments are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, so eating a blessed meal around the table at home reflects the special relationship between family members.
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