Traditions

“So have you ever had lutefisk before?” someone at the end of the table asked.  I was looking the other way and didn’t see who was being asked but everyone else at the table was a was at least 30 years older than me and they had all just finished working their volunteer shift. It was the first time I had helped with the supper so I could only assume they were asking me.   

Around us the church basement buzzed with conversations. Servers dressed in the traditional red and white Norwegian garb moved swiftly carrying full platters of food to the tables and whisking away empties. Pitchers of water, plates of lefse (something that looked like tortillas only made from potatoes), sugar bowls and sticks of butter were already on the table. Ceramic plates and coffee cups, mismatched silverware, paper napkins and small clear water glasses completed each place setting. As we waited for the first round of food my tablemates began spreading butter and sugar on pieces of the lefse and rolling them up into small tubes.

“Nope. Never,” I said. “In fact I’d never really heard about it until we moved here.”

Three months ago my wife and I had moved to this small western Wisconsin town when they called me to serve as their Associate Pastor. It was my first call right out of seminary so I was just beginning to learn what it meant to be a pastor. The town was predominantly populated by people of Norwegian Lutheran heritage. I had grown up in German Lutheran churches and had thought when I got the call that there wouldn’t be much difference between German and Norwegian Lutherans; in fact I thought all Lutherans were pretty much the same.  So I was surprised to find myself faced with a steep cultural learning curve that included new social customs in addition to the traditional food items.

All around the table knives ceased spreading butter and nine heads all looked in my direction.  

“Oh, this I gotta see,” said the eighty-year-old woman across from me. Smiles broke out on faces as if a terrible secret were about to be revealed.

It was the first Saturday in November, and the First Lutheran Church in Blair was holding its annual fund-raising dinner celebrating the congregation’s Norwegian heritage. It is known as the Lutefisk Supper.  The church basement was crowded with people sitting on metal folding chairs around six-foot-long rectangular tables. Upstairs in the sanctuary people patiently sat in pews waiting for their number to be called before being led down the narrow staircase to the basement Fellowship Hall. They had come to this small, western Wisconsin town from as far away as Milwaukee and the Twin Cities and then waited up to an hour and a half just to have this meal.

The menu included meatballs, mashed potatoes, rutabagas, lefse, Norwegian cookies, and pastries, and, of course, lutefisk. As their new pastor I had been informed that lutefisk is a Norwegian delicacy that consists of a piece of Atlantic cod fish that has been sun dried, rehydrated in a lye bath, rinsed thoroughly and then boiled in a pouch of cheesecloth. This fish has been a holiday tradition for generations of Scandinavian immigrants and a lutefisk supper dredged up warm, family emotions and childhood memories for those who came to it. Every year the church served 1500 to 1600 people, several hundred more than the population of the town.

The elderly gentleman on my right leaned towards me and quietly said, “The trick is to find a firm piece of fish then drown it in melted butter. I like to stir mine in with the mashed rutabagas so that it hides the flavor.”

“Personally, I can’t stand the stuff,” complained the woman across from me. “I’ve never liked it.”

Just then the first platters of food arrived from the kitchen and began making their way around the table.  Large servings of potatoes, meatballs and rutabagas filled the ceramic plates in front of everyone. Then came the platter of lutefisk and the man at the head of the table joked about what everyone else was going to eat as he pretended to keep the whole thing for himself. When it got to me I looked for a firm piece but it all seemed rather gelatinous and had a strong fish odor. I took enough to be polite but not so much that I couldn’t force it down if I didn’t like it. I drowned it in melted butter per directions from my neighbor just to be on the safe side.

When all the platters had been set down and people around the table began to eat I took a fork full of the fish and put it in my mouth trying not to make any faces that might give away a possible negative reaction. What can I say? It tasted like fish. Normally I don’t mind fish, especially white fish like cod. But what I had in my mouth right now didn’t feel like fish. Instead of a tender flakes of fish flesh, it felt more like Jell-O: Warm, fish flavored Jell-O.

I swallowed and consciously resisted reaching for my water glass to wash it down. Instead I casually broke the mashed potato and gravy volcano and took a bite to chase the taste and feel of the lutefisk out of my mouth. When I looked up several sets of eyes were on me.

“Well, what do you think?” I was asked.

“It’s interesting,” I answered, looking around to see who was paying attention. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anything quite like it.”  This answer drew some knowing nods and a few chuckles.

As my eyes returned to my plate I noticed that the elderly woman across the table from me, who had distinctly professed a dislike for the dish, had taken a serving larger than my own. I watched as she ate one bite after another. I was mystified by her actions. Why would a person force themselves to eat something that they found so distasteful when they didn’t have to?

“I thought you didn’t like lutefisk,” I said.

“I don’t,” she said. “But my mother makes me take some every year.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This woman who appeared to be in her eighties was telling me that her mother made her take some lutefisk every year. I looked around the table to see if anyone was old enough to be her mother. No one came close.

Dumbfounded, I asked, “Is she here?”

She looked at me rather matter-of-factly and said, “Heavens no. She died almost twenty years ago,” as if it was common knowledge.

“And yet you still take some lutefisk and make yourself eat it,” I clarified.

“Yes. She is my mother after all.”

I wondered at the thought of being so conditioned that a person would continue to obey a long-dead parent even at the age of eighty or more. Certainly this woman was free to eat what she liked and to avoid those things she disliked. Isn’t that what it meant to be an adult in charge of your own life? And yet here she was gulping down this fish as if she were still an eight year old girls under the watchful eye of her mother at Christmas dinner.

At the same time, though, I felt like I was standing on holy ground. I didn’t completely understand it but this meal, this fish, was more than a fund raising supper. It was almost sacramental in the way that it drew the community together, spanning time and distance while connecting people to the generations who had preceded them. And now I was privileged to be welcomed into that community and join in the tradition. Perhaps it didn’t link me to my personal ancestors but it connected me to the people I would be serving as a pastor.

This is the dichotomy of traditions. They keep us rooted in one place while connecting people across time and space. At their best, traditions provide a firm foundation for us to go out and explore all that life has to offer while keeping us mindful of who we are and where we came from. At their worst, traditions hold us in one place, demanding unquestioned allegiance to a way of life that may no longer exist. The struggle usually comes when the traditions of one generation no longer hold meaning for the next; when traditions fails to make those vital connections. I wondered if this woman’s grandchildren would so steadfastly eat something they disliked, or if they would more likely connect by baking their grandmother’s cookie recipe instead.

I finished my lutefisk and even took a small second helping when the platters were passed around the table again. I judiciously mixed it with mashed rutabagas to help it down. And in the years that followed I would work a fourteen hour shift at the Lutefisk Supper on the first Saturday in November to be part of the community and to be part of that tradition.