Eating Christmas: Anna Michael Sussman talks about making peace with Christmas fare

What goes together better than food and the holidays? Well, lots of things — if you ask Anna Michael Sussman.

But they've made their peace with Christmas fare. Sussman performed an essay live last week at the Eating Christmas show at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix.

ANNA MICHAEL SUSSMAN: My first memory of the holidays is the brilliant six pointed tinfoil star sitting on top of our tiny, plastic Christmas tree. The Hanukkah bush, as my parents called it. None of the kids at my Hebrew school had a Hanukkah bush.

My family is technically what could be called interfaith, so, my relationship to the holidays is already unorthodox. My father's parents, capital J, Jewish. My mother's side is a bit more complex. Her mother, my grandmother, is the daughter of an English-Anglican priest and her father, my grandfather was a German Jewish Holocaust survivor. So, complex.

Because of this, my mother, though raised Jewish, still grew up with a big decorated tree and a stocking as well as a classic English Christmas dinner of figgy pudding and a roast goose. She wanted me to experience her mother's Christmas traditions as well. But my father, although not at all religious, was vehemently opposed to anything Christmas. In fact, I learned recently, he barely agreed to the Hanukkah Bush. Massive hater.

Another complicated aspect of the holidays was my father's terrible relationship with food. His mother would say that he had two modes, starving and sick. Unfortunately, he gifted me this trait. I would slam an entire plate, barely chew, and then wonder why I felt like sh-t, which is shockingly, I have come to find out, not healthy.

I was probably 12 the first time my father made a negative comment about my weight. I had been taking circus classes and my new dream was to be in Cirque Du Soleil. I told him this, excitedly. He looked me up and down and said, “honey, I don't think you have the right body type for that.” What?

I had always been a skinny little kid. So up until this point, I was eager to grow up and fill out and look more like the celebrities that I idolized. I didn't even notice I had slid down the other side of the double-edged sword wielded against young women. You should only take up space in designated places. An idea sold to us before we even knew we were buying. And I bought, and eventually I realized the biggest salesman was my father.

This will be my eighth Christmas without seeing my father. Even though I have never regretted cutting off contact, every December feels a little bit like a stomachache. It's not debilitating, but it's there and it hurts. And even now, as I think about the Yorkshire pudding and the Latkes and my stepdad's incredible frosted angel cookies. I feel my father's presence leering from afar, like a fatphobic Christmas ghost.

When I feel this ache, I try to remember that that's healing. That's the natural process of grief that comes with losing a parent, regardless of circumstance. And it may ache a little for ever, but it can't hurt me.

So, I focus instead on how beautiful my holidays are now in this life that I've created. My family, setting up the tree together, a big living tree now, but still with the tinfoil star. Making and eating whatever food I crave without guilt because I deserve to and spending as much time as I possibly can with the people I love and who choose to love me.