Leo's+Mosaic

Traditions
All people like to eat. Some meals, however, have rules, guidelines, and traditions concerning eating. In my culture, the Jewish holiday of Passover is a good example of a dinner tradition. Roald had a traditional family reunion feast when he visited his grandparents. The ancient Greeks had traditional banquets as well. Let’s look into those three examples of traditional dinners.

Being Jewish, I have certain traditions that other people may not have. One of these traditions is the Passover holiday Seder meal. Every Passover, we go to my grandmother’s house and have the Seder, the big feast to celebrate. First we say some prayers like the Four Questions: why do we eat matzo?; why do we eat reclining; why do we eat bitter herbs; why do we dip our vegetables in salt water? Then the meal begins. My favorite food is matzo (unleavened bread). After we finish the meal, we sing some songs. Then the tradition of hiding the Afikomen ( half a piece of matzo) begins. The kids hide it, and then the adults try to find it. After that, we have dessert, which, for me, is more matzo. Roald also had some dinner traditions. Every summer, like me, he went to visit his grandparents, except he went to Norway. On the evening of his arrival, they would have a big feast. It started with fresh fish. His family also did something called skalling. When you skall, you look your challenger (the one who asked you to skall ) in the eye (and vise versa ). Then you drink, all the while keeping your eyes locked on the other person’s eyes. After the meal, the crunchy ice cream called krokan that Roald ’s grandmother had made would be served as dessert.

Now let's look at one of the greatest civilizations in history, the Greeks. The Greeks had some very interesting dinner traditions. For example, the wine was always dulled with water. The host of the party (for that's what Greek dinners were, with lots of music, singing, talking, and drinking) would decide how much water would be put in the wine. Pure wine was thought to be dangerous. Also, women weren't allowed in the room. Today, we sit in chairs but in ancient Greece they reclined on couches, just like in Passover! That was a symposium. Today, we use symposium to mean a discussion. We still use the word for the traditional Greek banquets today. Now you know about three different dinner traditions from around the world: the Jewish traditional dinner of Passover, Roald’s traditional family reunion dinner in Norway, and the ancient Greek symposium. It’s all very interesting. So next time you are eating dinner think about what you learned in this paper. Is your dinner more like the Jewish Passover, Roald’s family reunion dinner, or the Greek symposium?

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