Food is as integral in any Christmas celebration as is air necessary to our very survival on this well-oxygenated planet. In other words, you can’t have Christmas without some form of over-the-top feast. It’s just the way it is.
And as you might have already figured, the best way to approach it is to eat a lot. It’s like visiting your grandma—you can’t leave until you regret the 20 pounds of everything you just ate. You don’t want to see grandma sad.
Very similarly, here we have this one guy’s mom’s idea for a week-ish-long celebration of the holidays in the most over-the-top feast fest ever known to man. All presented in an open-ended email to the family.
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It's just not Christmas if you're not overeating for several days straight, and then wondering what to do with that extra 15 pounds you've gained
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And Khalid El Khatib's mother perfectly sums up the traditional holiday spirit with her "home for the holidays" email that has recently surfaced on Twitter
Image credits: kmelkhat
Writer Khalid El Khatib recently went to Twitter to share something that’s sure to put anyone in a holiday mood.
Each year, his mother sends out what Khalid calls a “home for the holidays” email to him and his siblings. It’s an agenda of sorts detailing the family’s activities throughout the holiday season. And when I say detailing, in Khalid’s case, it really does mean that.
The mail is an agenda of sorts that details what Khalid's family will be doing for the 7 days leading up to Christmas—"90% eating"
Image credits: kmelkhat
Image credits: kmelkhat
“An incredibly thorough, detail-rich look ahead at how it’s possible for me to gain 15 lbs in one week,” Khalid jokingly remarks in his tweet. The tweet is complemented by a screenshot of said email, listing a variety of celebratory activities for each day beginning Sunday, December 18th through to Christmas day a week later.
"I honestly don’t know how or when the emails started, but they’re not limited to Christmas," Khalid told Bored Panda when asked how this whole little email tradition began. "Any time my sisters and I go home to Iowa, we can expect a robust itinerary like that a week in advance. My mom said she wants to ensure we keep coming back. Clearly it works."
The list included everything you'd ever want in a Christmas dinner: pizza, tacos, chili, burgers, assorted cheeses, beef tenderloins, bourbon, mimosas, etc.
Image credits: kmelkhat
Image credits: kmelkhat
The agenda is almost exclusively tailored to guarantee everyone in the family knows what their diet is going to be for the 7 days leading up to Christmas. It includes practically every food and beverage imaginable: from pizza, tacos, chili, and burgers to assorted cheeses and Bill’s cheesecake to beef tenderloins and smokies wrapped in bacon to bourbon and mimosas.
The only true exception to the food rule is the ladies’ manicure, which one Tweeter comically hoped Khalid’s invited to too. Khalid also added in a response to a commenter that there was also an idea to frost cookies and hand them out to neighbors and then see a movie. But otherwise, it’s “90% eating.”
Everything on this list looks just too good to pass up on, but we still had to ask what Khalid is looking forward to the most. And he said this: "It's hard to pick, but a lot of my fondest memories center around Christmas Eve and Christmas morning—we still do 'Santa' in that my mom hauls all of our gifts under the tree when me and my sisters are sleeping. And obviously, Christmas Day is an eating marathon."
Image credits: kmelkhat
Now, I don’t know who Bill is, but if there’s a cheesecake named after a man, that man definitely knows how to make a cheesecake. And that’s just the beginning as many others were, at the very least, intrigued to attend this munching marathon.
Many folks tweeted at Khalid, asking if they could somehow join the festivities—either by getting an invitation or, even better, getting adopted by his mother. This email alone made some salivate, possibly very excessively.
Others were simply admiring how adorably loving Khalid’s mother is by organizing all of it, some expressing their hopes of becoming like her one day with their own kids.
And you bet people now want to be a part of this celebration of epic proportions
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A bit of a side note: historically speaking, Christmas dinner is all about togetherness and community, and it’s a tradition that has been passed on for nearly 2 millennia at this point. While gastronomic habits have changed in this period of time, the fundamental message has stayed the same. And the massive amounts were mostly the same.
As to the question of why you might upset your mother if you don’t eat at least your own weight in Christmas food, there are several explanations for that. Saint Leo University points out that it can be overall seasonal stress because those gifts aren’t gonna buy and gift themselves (and that’s besides typical lively struggles).
Another cause might be nutritional deficiencies—like skipping breakfast and lunch and then binging on seven meals, plus Bill's cheesecake. The suggested healthier approach would be to not skip any meals before that and to not put yourself through starvation-induced overeating.
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But, back to the topic at hand. Khalid’s tweet soon took off, garnering a bit over 143,000 likes as well as several thousand retweets and quoted tweets. Responding to this, he tweeted that there are two ways into his family: if you’re the author and host of Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, or marrying Khalid, as everyone else involved is taken.
In another tweet, Khalid explained that the only two ways you can get in on the action is if you are Ina Garten, or if you ask Khalid for his hand in marriage
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Now, all of this still begs the question how is consuming this much even biologically possible?
Khalid says it's part of his heritage: "I’m born and raised in Iowa and my dad is Arab. Eating a lot is in my DNA."
He added: "It’s certainly not what I’m used to in New York, but it’s like when I’m back in Iowa for holidays my stomach expands magically like Santa’s bag."
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Oh, and if you're wondering, that little section "Christmas Eve: Khalid usually decides the menu"—he told Bored Panda that he's going with Ina Garten's lasagna: "It’s a fan favorite (I’m referring to both my family and followers when I say fan)."
You can check out the tweet in context here, and be sure to share what you think of Khalid’s mom’s celebratory holiday plan. And while you’re at it, why not share your Christmas traditions, stories, or the times you had to justify eating more than humanly possible in the comment section below!
Oh, and if you wanna get even more hyped up for Christmas, you can also check out our recent funny Christmas card list.