{"id":39415,"date":"2021-11-04T16:19:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T16:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=39415"},"modified":"2021-11-04T16:19:16","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T16:19:16","slug":"taste-nation-holiday-edition-padma-lakshmi","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/taste-nation-holiday-edition-padma-lakshmi\/","title":{"rendered":"Padma Lakshmi Rethinks the Holidays In a Seasonal Edition of \u2018Taste the Nation\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Padma
Padma Lakshmi with members of the Wampanoag Nation (Photo: Craig Blankenhorn\/Hulu)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The thing about The Holidays\u2014that catchall American term for the late fall and early winter months\u2014is that they\u2019re familiar. Christmas, New Year\u2019s and Thanksgiving are omnipresent in our culture, and even people who don\u2019t celebrate Chanukah are aware<\/em> of it. Look past the obligations and stressors and hopefully what you find are the annual rhythms, the traditions, the stories we tell ourselves. It\u2019s all part of what\u2019s supposed to makes this time of year so comforting. Food is a huge part of that\u2014these are feast days, after all\u2014and cooking content tends to shift into high gear as soon as tick-or-treating ends.<\/p>\n

This week, Padma Lakshmi<\/a>\u2019s Hulu series Taste the Nation<\/em> returns with a four episode \u201cHoliday Edition.\u201d But rather than cocoon viewers with images of sweet potato pies and gingerbread, the series aims to rethinks these familiar holidays from under-represented perspectives. That may sound destabilizing to some, like a bit of a buzz kill to others. But Lakshmi and co. aren\u2019t here to tell us all that Santa Claus doesn\u2019t exist. Instead, Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition<\/em> aims to complicate our understanding of the holidays, and thus enrich our experience of them.<\/p>\n

In its first season, the series followed Lakshmi as she traversed the US, exploring the impact different immigrant communities have had on the country\u2019s cuisine, and by extension its identity. It was a moving journey that exposed yet another fundamental irony about America: the eagerness with which we\u2019ll embrace and appropriate different ethnic flavors and food traditions while rejecting the people with whom they originated.<\/p>\n

\"Padma
Padma Lakshmi celebrating Nochebuena in Miami (Photo: Angel Valentin\/Hulu)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This season, Lakshmi explores some of our best-known winter holidays from unexpected angles and different perspective, busting certain cherished American myths along the way. In New York, she visits a historic deli on the Lower East Side to speak to the proprietors about Chanukah and its place in the Jewish American experience. Why, she wonders, is this relatively minor holiday the one that is most familiar to most non-Jewish Americans? Is it simply due to its proximity to Christmas? And how do Jewish Americans actually feel about that? In Miami, she celebrates Nochebuena and discovers how this Christmas Eve tradition helps the city\u2019s Cuban American community keep the memory of pre-revolution Cuba alive. She eschews Times Square\u2019s countdown for a trip to LA\u2019s Koreatown to celebrate the Lunar New Year with Drag Race <\/em><\/a>alum Kim Chi<\/a>. We hear about both the pain caused by the recent uptick in hate crimes<\/a> against Asian Americans and the tension between an older, more traditional generation of Korean Americans and their children.<\/p>\n

In these episodes Lakshmi exposes us different ways of celebrating some of the biggest holidays on the calendar. But in the second episode, which is focused on Thanksgiving, she takes on the myth of that uniquely American feast head on by visiting members of the Wampanoag Nation in Cape Cod and Martha\u2019s Vineyard. It\u2019s a radical, profoundly necessary re-thinking of a complicated holiday, that recenters the experience of the country\u2019s Indigenous people.<\/p>\n

Throughout, Lakshmi is, as ever, an unfailingly charismatic presence. She throws herself into the various holiday celebrations whole heartedly. She listens with empathy, warmth and companionable humor as her hosts tell their stories, leading to some genuinely emotional moments. Her project on Taste the Nation<\/em> is to expand our idea of what America is by taking a closer look at the ingredients in this supposed melting pot. Of course, thorny issues abound. But the goal is inclusion. And, as corny as it may sound, isn\u2019t that what the holidays are all about: Welcoming each other to the shared communal table?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":39420,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16,3925],"yoast_head":"\nPadma Lakshmi Rethinks the Holidays In a Seasonal Edition of \u2018Taste the Nation\u2019<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Padma Lakshmi\u2019s Hulu series Taste the Nation returns with a four episode \u201cHoliday Edition.\u201d But rather than cocoon viewers with images of sweet potato pies and gingerbread, the series aims to rethinks these familiar holidays from under-represented perspectives.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/taste-nation-holiday-edition-padma-lakshmi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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