The meals we share at Christmas add up to far more than the sum of their tasty parts.

For at least five Durango-area residents, the holiday kitchen hosts the fight to preserve their culture. No matter what we serve, it’s often through our holiday culinary rituals and celebrations that we honor our forebears. Food tells the story of who we are.

Bo and Helen Pruski’s Christmas Eve guests will have the same meatless meal she, her husband and their two grown children have enjoyed for more than three decades.

Both Bo’s and Helen’s Ukrainian parents immigrated through Ellis Island to the United States after World War II. The Christmas Eve pierogies, made just hours earlier, are covered with tea towels on the kitchen counter, ready to be dropped into a pot of boiling water. Cabbage rolls, stuffed with mushrooms and rice, will be passed around the table with mushroom sauce.

Bowls of borscht and champagne will be the first course. The Pruskis’ children have married spouses from France and Australia and have lived abroad for many Christmases. Even when the entire family is not able to feast together, homage is paid to the heritage of the in-laws, too. Added to the Ukrainian feast will be an Australian Christmas pudding from the family of daughter Kat’s Australian spouse, Charlie. Champagne comes from son Bo Jr.’s French wife, Marie-Laure.

Bo Sr. offers smoked fish or pickled herring purchased when he visits his native Chicago. Poppy seed rolls, kolacki, kutia and a holiday compote made from dried pears, plums and cherries all have a place on the menu, but the star of the meal will be the pierogies.

“They’re a lot of work, but it’s how we remember our heritage. It’s what our parents did – without the aid of a mixer,” Helen Pruski said.

Earlier that day the dough will be kneaded, rolled and cut into three-inch circles, then filled with a potato and cheese combination or sauerkraut. Guests, too, arrive early and roll up their sleeves to press and seal the savory dumplings.

“But you never count them. That’s bad luck,” she says of her mother’s superstition.

“This meal is about remembrance’ she said. “Over time you keep one or two of the old, but add new traditions. Marriages allow new things to be integrated and brought to the table.”

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Ken Anderson can’t remember the first year he had his favorite breakfast birthday meal Christmas morning, but he’s really clear that it wasn’t chestnuts that were roasting on the open fire in their kitchen.

“The oil for the soft-shelled corn tortillas caught fire while we were distracted opening Christmas presents,” he recalled.

His mother put out the stove-top fire with Kool-Aid.

The next year it happened again. That’s when she used flour.

The third time the Christmas morning breakfast ritual went ablaze, the Andersons had a fire extinguisher close at hand.

Anderson’s Christmas culinary traditions include beef tacos for breakfast, complete with guacamole and sour cream. Born at 7:28 p.m. Dec. 25, 1967, Anderson said his mother did a fine job of separating and celebrating both Christmas and his birthday with food traditions still near and dear to him.

After sharing the Christmas birthday breakfast, the family turned their attention to celebrating Christmas. In the late afternoon, they served a traditional Christmas turkey with side dishes that always included homemade noodles, a recipe from his stepfather’s side of the family.

Once the table was cleared and dishes were in the sink, the family’s focus shifted back to Ken. At 7:28 p.m., out came the birthday “cake” – a homemade blueberry pie, complete with whipped cream and candles. Not a single birthday present was unwrapped until the clock gave the OK each year.

Even after his parents divorced and the family moved to Delta and Montrose, his mother continued the food traditions that defined Christmas for her two sons. Both celebrations were important. Both included Ken’s favorite foods.

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With her family miles and oceans apart, the roots of Linda Hartlein’s family food tree run both deep and wide.

Both of Hartlein’s omas, or grandmothers, immigrated to the United States from Germany. To celebrate the holiday, they baked stolen, a rich yeast bread made with citron, almonds and marzipan, traditionally slathered in butter and served on Christmas morning.

Hartlein has refined the original recipe, but her daughter, Lauren Hartlein-Sowa, who now lives in Vienna, has returned to the original recipe made by her great-grandmothers.

“After the grandmothers died, my mom stopped using citron and substituted cranberries and raisins because we really disliked citron,” Hartlein said.

Hartlein bakes the free-formed loaves days before Christmas, sharing the treat with local family and friends. The aroma of the yeast bread rising in the kitchen is a fragrance she ties to her youth, when she helped with holiday food preparation. It wasn’t unusual for her to occasionally steal a piece of the dough.

“It is a family tradition that stretches back hundreds of years, passed on from unnamed loved ones to the present, a way of honoring our families’ saints,” she said.

The marzipan the extended family uses comes from Europe, so the breads share a common flavor, even though the families live and bake miles apart.

Hartlein’s mother lives in Tennessee, her sister and niece bake in Texas, her daughter in Austria.

“But we feel connected with each other, baking and eating the same bread,” she said.

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Traditional Christmas Eve foods aren’t always appreciated by the youngest tykes gathered around the table. Nor do all the branches of the family tree practice food traditions held dear to some.

That’s Mike Todt’s memory about tourtiere pie, a savory French Canadian pastry laden with pork, potatoes and spices, complemented by tomato relish and mustard pickles.

Todt preferred his grandmother’s turkey stuffing over the labor-intensive pie made by the senior women in the family and treated as almost “sacred.”

“We all got one piece at Christmas. I didn’t like the pie then. But I could sell my piece to cousins, which I occasionally did,” he said.

Every Christmas, his mother and grandmother searched for the best pork, potatoes and black summer savory, a key ingredient, Todt said. The pie crust had to be flaky and perfect. They would spend a whole day making the pies and two more making the tomato, onion and pepper relish plus mustard pickles. His job was to stir the pots and cut the veggies.

Todt has only one family member alive today, a niece who lives in Detroit. She doesn’t uphold the custom because her mother never made the pie, Todt said.

Despite his youthful indifference, Todt and his wife, Tammy Hoier, now bake and serve the traditional Christmas Eve menu centerpiece to friends.

“As I grew old, I developed a real fancy for the tourtiere pie.”

Tammy makes a tomato sauce somewhat similar to the chili tomato relish of his childhood, Mike said. The couple can’t find black summer savory, but they’ve added their own spice variations to the pie that he now considers delicious.

He said baking the pie is a way to honor and remember his mother and grandmother.

The 67-year-old, semi-retired community activist admits he doesn’t make his own crust.

“But I’m going to work on that,” he said.

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Licensed psychotherapist Jane Pederson doesn’t mince words when it comes to sizing up the importance of remembering the holiday food customs of our ancestors.

“I don’t think Americans do a very good job establishing food traditions. Families need to. It promotes closeness,” she said.

Pederson’s father was born and reared in Denmark. He came to the United States as a young adult at the start of the Great Depression and settled in Omaha, where an uncle already lived.

Pederson remembers Christmas Eve dinners of roast beef, potatoes and green beans followed by the highlight of the evening: a Danish almond rice pudding dessert in which all family members had an equal chance at finding a whole blanched almond hidden within it. Her father would reward the lucky winner with a special present, such as a whimsical, dancing Santa.

Because there were two young children at home, in the early days, her father would fudge a little, tucking two almonds in the fluted mold so both she and her brother delighted in winning the surprise. But once the two reached the age of reason, the game changed, and Pederson learned about pride in ancestry.

“‘You are going to be a part of this Danish tradition,’ my father said,” she said.

It is a tradition Pederson and her husband practice to this day. They recall the joy the whole family shared when a young niece’s almond discovery netted her a scooter that she rode indoors on Christmas Eve.

Pederson tops her ris a la mande with a sweet Bing cherry sauce, just as her cousins in Denmark might.

Now that her adult son is married and living in Seattle with his Polish-American wife, Pederson said the couple has added the Christmas foods dear to her daughter-in-law. A course of seven fishes is part of their tradition, as is setting an empty place at the table for the departed.

“As a therapist in private practice, I often ask clients what happens at these important holiday times, including birthdays. I tell them, ‘It’s your responsibility to establish traditions.’ Traditions promote intimacy and remind all of us that we belong to something,” she said.