For as long as I could remember my family always celebrated Christmas Eve the same way. After the Christmas Eve service at church, the family would head over to my grandmother’s house–or that of one of her siblings. There was a progressive meal so after awhile we would move on to another house. I remember three houses and three courses, but eventually, I think it became two houses. Nobody does it any longer as my grandmother’s generation is all gone now.
While there were always a lot of delicious Christmas desserts (Grandma, in particular, was a wonderful baker), the main course–the one that couldn’t be avoided missed–was the oyster stew. Year after year, I watched the women stirring the pot of oyster-studded milk, but do you think I ever thought to ask where this tradition came from? Well, maybe I did, but I never got an answer. Maybe nobody knew.
What I should have specifically asked Grandma is “did your mom make the oyster stew on Christmas Eve, too?” But I didn’t.
Suddenly this year I wondered where oyster stew came from. It seemed so out of the ordinary, and my family’s holiday eating habits were not out of the ordinary at all. Turkey or ham, casseroles, cole slaw, jello dishes, cookies–“All-American” food.
I thought about how Grandma’s whole family participated in this tradition. Nobody ever said, “Hey, let’s make clam chowder instead.” Or meatballs. Or tamales. Nobody said, “Let’s try this new recipe.” Nope. Oyster stew.
I wondered if the recipe and the tradition had been passed down in the family. If so, they would have gotten it from Grandma’s mother, Clara Waldeck Mulder. And if it went back still further, it would have come from her mother, Alwine Noffke Waldeck, who might have been born, as her brother August was, in the little Pomeranian town Schwetzkow. Schwetzkow is about 12-15 miles from the Baltic Sea. Alwine was an adult with children when she immigrated her, so she would have brought her traditions with her.
To try to get to the origins, I researched the subject through my friend Ms. Google. One of the most popular articles right now is this one: Oyster Stew on Christmas. This writer argues that the origin lies with the Pilgrims who were “oyster crazy.” She says that when the Irish Catholics came in the 19th century, they latched onto the oyster stew because it closely resembled the traditional Irish ling stew and ling (a type of fish) was not available in the United States. Hmm, my oyster-stew-slurping family are definitely not DAR and not Irish and not Catholic. I couldn’t imagine anybody choosing a tradition of oyster stew just for the heck of it.
At least one article said that Germans couldn’t get oysters because the water is too cold, but then why does Russia get oysters from the Baltic? All in all, the research was very sparse about the Baltic, other than the problems with invasion of foreign species and pollution. Another issue is that in the 19th century, oysters were inexpensive and could be eaten by people without means. Canned oysters have also been readily available in the winter.
I posed my question on both my personal Facebook page and on the Prussian Genealogy group on Facebook. Interesting to see the difference in responses. On my personal page, where I am friends with people who come from a wide variety of backgrounds, only two people (besides family) had heard of the tradition. They both ate oyster stew on Christmas Eve with their Swedish in-laws. This didn’t deter me because Sweden and Pomerania were on opposite sides of the Baltic, and part of Pomerania was even Swedish for some time!
I wrote to my friend, the Swedish writer Catharina Lind, and asked her. She said that there have “never been oysters either in the Baltic Sea or the Bottnian sea, the east coast of Sweden. The salinity level is too low for oysters and the water is too cold. There are oysters in the Nordic sea, but very few, so oysters have never really been part of any Swedish tradition. There are no oyster dishes in Scandinavian (Sweden, Norway, Finland) Christmas traditions. Though a lot of fish, mostly herring and whitefish, and in modern times also salmon. We traditionally eat plenty of pork.” Catharina went on to speculate that perhaps the Swedish Christmas soup made with porcini and oyster mushrooms could have evolved over time to mean fishy oysters instead of mushrooms.
So I thought it was all over.
But then, on the Prussian Facebook Group, where everyone has Prussian, if not only Pomeranian roots, people began to chime in–lots of people have said that their Midwestern Prussian relatives always served oyster stew on Christmas Eve.
Then somebody found the recipe for several German Christmas soups printed in German–and oyster stew is one of them!
Recipe in English
Servings: 4
24 pcs oysters (including juice)
40 g of butter
3/4 cup whole milk (hot)
sweet paprika
salt
pepper
For oyster soup, cook the thrown oysters in the hot butter with oyster juice. When the oyster margins begin to ripen, add the milk, season with salt and pepper and heat. Serve the oyster soup in soup bowls sprinkled with sweet paprika (if desired).
None of this research leads to a definitive answer about the origin of my family’s tradition. Clearly, a lot of ethnicities in the United States have claimed oyster stew. If you’ve ever eaten it, you might wonder why anybody would want to claim it. The only time I liked it was when my husband joined the family and “sneaked” wine and spices into the dish. Now it’s been years since I’ve eaten oyster stew, and I don’t miss the taste, but I do miss everybody who was there at the time.
I wonder if anybody in my family still serves oyster stew!
Catharina’s Christmas books are available here. I also recommend her beautiful book, “Fly Wings, Fly High!” It’s a lyrical memoir about the magpie family she shares her yard with and her own struggles with heart disease.
The Family Kalamazoo 
I commented on your FB post, but I will comment again and differently. In my mom’s family in the hills of southern Ohio, with English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and French ancestors, it was a treat to have pork loin and oysters — not mixed together — in a Christmastime meal. I always marveled at all the oysters shipped to the Midwest back then for Christmas. Now, was this before and/or after the Great Depression? I don’t know.
Anyway, the oysters were probably in soup.
Doesn’t it seem like oysters being shipped in would be expensive? Did you hear about this from your mother? Did she give any idea of any other way to prepare the oysters for Christmas? This whole oyster thing with Christmas is such a mystery!
Now I understand why you asked this question on Facebook! If there weren’t oysters in Germany/Prussia, where did they get them from in the days before refrigeration and easy shipping from distant ports? What a mystery! (And that recipe does sound awfully bland, but I have never been an oyster fan even in my non-kosher days.)
Once in a while, I liked canned oysters for a snack. About the refrigeration, I’m sure they shipped food like oysters on ice blocks (which last much longer than ice cubes and chips–and could be changed out along the way, I suppose), and then there have been canned oysters for a long time. My great-grandfather’s fish market in Kalamazoo sold all kinds of seafood, and that was being shipped in from somewhere–not all the great lakes. I don’t like clam chowder at all (either type, but especially the white), so I wouldn’t be one that would like oyster stew!
Canned oysters sound like sacrilege to this New Englander! Wellfleet, where we spend the summer, is famous for its oysters. Too bad I don’t eat them.
Canned oysters are a yummy snack. They are not like eating slimy raw organs haha. They are a treat.
I guess I will have to take your word for it!
Yes, definitely. No cheating! 🙂
I never liked it, seldom ate it, but enjoyed the other treats and especially cookies!
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The cookies were my favorite, too! Remember how grandma had the kitchen table COVERED with all different cookies crammed in there! I’m glad to know you didn’t like that oyster stew either haha!
Wonderful post Luanne ~ started me thinking about some traditional dishes and where they came from in my family.
I loved the post on your Italian blog! I’d love to see traditional dishes on both your blogs! By the way, my husband has celiac and has to be completely gluten free and my son has perfected the most amazing gluten free latkes and brisket :). Too bad he doesn’t really have a recipe I could share.
Loved this. Fascinating research. I too miss my grandparents and the particularly special ways they always made Christmas sparkle. I’ve never had oyster stew, and based on your review, I probably never will. Bring on the tamales!
Yum! I don’t eat pork or beef, but I love pepper tamales :)! It’s so hard to know they are gone and that those ways are never coming back!
Loved this article. My Illinois Dutch and English served oyster stew on Christmas Eve, they lived 10 miles from the Mississippi river. I lived it very hot with lots of pepper and butter.
Dutch and English. Do you know which side started it in your family? Since my mom’s family is 3/4 Dutch and 1/4 Prussian, there was always the chance the oyster stew was Dutch, but after hearing all those people on the Prussian Genealogy page with their oyster stew Christmas memories, I figured that was probably a big link.
Great story….I love hearing about Christmas traditions in different families. Our big family tradition is to put up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. I think it is probably a German tradition, but I’m not sure.
Jill, I didn’t remember that about your family! Yes, definitely German which was all about Christmas Eve, and of course, the tree!
That is a Christian tradition. I am Episcopal and they do not decorate the church until Christmas Eve and they celebrate he 12 days of Christmas.
My mum’s side of the family was German, and we frequently had oyster stew – not just at Christmas. I hate to admit it, in the face of all this negativity, but I like it. To make it worse, I also like fruit cake! No, I LOVE fruitcake! I once bought a three pound Jane Parker (A&P brand) cake on a Thursday evening. Knowing myself as I do (we’re old friends) I put half of it in the freezer. Even so, by Monday night I had finished it off. Plain. Toasted. Plain with cream cheese. Toasted with cream cheese . .
One of the answers you received was that oysters used to be cheap, and that may have a lot to do with it. My great-grandfather owned a restaurant in Baltimore in the late 1890s and early 1900s. I have the bowl he used to put out for free oysters. It is 12 inches across the top (about 10 inches to the fill line) and 5-1/2 inches deep. I cannot imagine what it would cost to fill it up now – and keep it filled!
I’m glad to know that someone likes the oyster stew!!! And fruitcake, too, another thing I didn’t even think was edible when I was a kid. I always disliked raisins and am not a dried fruit person, so all those chewy pieces in the fruitcakes were not something I could eat. But the IDEA of fruitcake is beautiful.
Wow, FREE oysters?! That is almost unimaginable to me. Was it meant to be kind of like chips and salsa in a Mexican restaurant today? A snack while waiting for a meal? I mean, otherwise, how could he make a living?!
Interesting that your German side were the ones with the oyster stew, too. Hmm. Where in Germany were they from?
My grandmother claimed her family was from Nuremburg. Her last name was Schmidt, so I’ll just have to take her word for it. The Porstmann family (my mother’s father) was from Altenburg, in Saxony.
Have you tried to search to see if it really was Nuremburg? Or is the name so common it makes searching difficult?
Schmidt? It’s the German equivalent of Smith! Her father’s name was Jacob, so that’s no help. To make life even more interesting, her mum found out dear old Jake had fathered a child with another woman, and after showing him to the door, she destroyed her marriage license and everything else. My grandmother didn’t even know where she’d been baptized, or I could have tracked it from there. Total dead end.
What a story! My gosh! I was thinking of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt since most Germans had four names, rather than two or three–and might go by any of the first three :)!
I am from the Baltic and have to agree with your swedish friend. We don’t have oysters in the Baltic, not because of the temperature but of the missing salt. If temperature were the reason, the North Sea shouldn’t have oysters either and the best I’ve ever had were in Belgium. I’ve never heard of oyster stew as a German christmas tradition. But as long as it is one in your family, it is a nice one 🙂 Merry christmas!!
Where on the Baltic are you from, Barbara? And the Baltic doesn’t have salt? or low salt? It was so fascinating to me to see that my Noffke ancestors came from so close to the Baltic. I had no idea! Merry Christmas to you!
I am from Lübeck, which is abt. 40 miles northeast of Hamburg. Directly in this little corner of former East and West Germany. And yes the Baltic has salt but at a much lower level than the North Sea. And I am pretty sure that “salt” is not even the correct term, but you know what I mean 🙂
Maybe salinity? I’d love to visit your area!
I also have tried to trace how certain family traditions came to being in my own family. For the most part I can never be sure. Some came from outside the family or developed as the family grew and married into other families. It is fun to try and figure out. For my part the Oyster stew sounds like good food. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas with the traditions and family you love.
It is really hard to track down! And some of the strongest traditions seem to be the ones we create ourselves as we go! Merry Christmas, Charles!
What a pretty vintage card!
Just dropping in to see you smile!
Hope your holidays are magical!
I never did the progressive dinner at holidays, but have heard of it. It’s an interesting way to share the celebration duties. When I was growing up in northern Ohio, we never had oysters – I like them now, though. Great post. Thanks for sharing.
It really is a good way, especially among siblings! Their parents lived out in the country in the next county, and in the bad weather that wouldn’t have been feasible.
We never had oysters for Christmas growing up. (German immigrants about 1700). When my sis-in-law made Christmas dinner for her first time, she made oyster stuffing in the turkey. Not a fan! She said it was her family tradition. Her family was also from the Midwest. Maybe it does have something to do with cost.
Oyster stuffing sounds kind of good for some reason. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever had it before. Maybe I even made it one year . . . . Yes, it could be the cost–something special/different that wasn’t expensive. Have any German Christmas traditions been passed down in your family? Such as celebrating on Christmas Eve instead of Day?
Not that I’m aware of. We always got to open one present after we made the family rounds on Christmas Eve. We never opened at other houses.
Yes, we used to do that, too. The one gift on Christmas Eve!
Your story about research into the origins of oyster stew could be forwarded to my cousins. Just a suggestion! Love, Mom
OK, great idea! xoxo
I hadn’t heard of Oyster Stew or it being a Christmas tradition. The first time I had oysters was when my American grandmother chicken-fried them. I think it was the same time she used sweet potatoes to make a fake pumpkin pie. I never wondered how she came to have oysters when they lived in the hills of West Virginia.
I love the effort you put into trying to figure out your family’s tradition.
Fried sounds GREAT! Why was it a fake pumpkin pie and not a sweet potato pie?!!!!
My Dad hated sweet potatoes but loved pumpkin pie. Grandma didn’t tell him until after he praised her pie that it was sweet potato. 😉
LOL! I like to think nobody could pull that fast one on me since I love pumpkin pie and do not like sweet potato pie (which I feel is lighter).
My grandmother has German roots (Hessian) and she served oyster stew … just like your recipe … on Christmas morning! I love this simple recipe. She is the only person I know that served oyster stew at Christmas. No Catholic background (Bretheren), no Irish …
Ah hah! I love it! Thanks, Denni!
My father said that he remembers oyster stew every Christmas morning followed by pancakes.
I am part Dutch and we eat oyster stew and fried oysters on Christmas Eve. I was wondering the same thing as you and decided to google and found your article. My great grandparents migrated from Holland to Holland, Michigan.
Wow! Are you sure that it was from your Dutch great-grandparents that the tradition emanated? Because that would be very helpful to know :). Gosh, I wish we had had the fried oysters part. I LOVE fried oysters, and boy, are they different from oyster stew ;). Thanks, Yvonne!
I grew up in Central Montana. My mother was of Dani’s and “Pennsylvania Dutch” descent and my father of Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh and “Pennsylvania Dutch” descent. We always had oyster stew on a Christmas Eve. The oysters came from cans with the juice, butter added, milk, salt, pepper and a little Work orcestershire sauce. We ate cold cuts, crudités, olives, pickles, salad, jello, breads, including rye bread, pickled herring. For dessert we had cookies and homemade candies. We kept the tradition but our kids did not like it so we switched to fondue.
That would be Danish descent and Worchestershire.
Isn’t that amazing that this tradition was sprinkled across the United States? I wouldn’t want to walk from Michigan to Montana. So Pennsylvania Dutch being German. Hmm. It does make you wonder, doesn’t it?