Updated Oct. 11, 2019. Originally published Nov. 12, 2013 as part of the November Carnival of Natural Parenting.

Food Allergies are a Bummer
It can be a real bummer having food sensitivities during the holiday season. Well, it can be a bummer having food sensitivities at any time of year, but holiday traditions often revolve around food. When you can’t eat that food, it can be easy to feel like the whole holiday is spoiled. One solution (or partial solution) is to create new traditions that don’t revolve around food! But that doesn’t do away with the existing traditions. The other obvious solution is to remake the food.
What Food is a “Yes”?
Obviously you can’t remake everyone else’s food at other parties you attend or homes you visit during the holidays. But you can ensure that there is food available for you to celebrate the festivities. Start by identifying whether there’s anything you already can eat. What you can’t eat is often so “in your face” that things you already can eat are readily overlooked. Because of my sensitivity to gluten, I can’t ever eat the traditional Christmas cookies. They’re everywhere, and I pretty much can’t eat them unless I’ve made them myself. But I can eat fudge, and that is also fairly plenteous at Christmastime. (It’s also the one major Christmas treat in my own family that I didn’t have to remake.)
What Can You Turn Into a “Yes”?
Then look at what you can’t eat and see what needs to be done to adapt it. Sometimes, it’s easier than you might think. If there’s only one ingredient you can’t have, it’s often a fairly simple substitution. (Of course, if you’re having to replace 5 of 8 ingredients or something, it will get much trickier.) For example, I have found that most non-yeasted baked goods that contain eggs will allow for a pretty simple substitution of non-gluten flours for the gluten-filled wheat flour, with no other changes. The egg helps keep them from falling apart. (If you have to also swap out the eggs, it might not be so straightforward. But give it a try and see!)
Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite, so they’ve always been one of our Christmas standbys. (I know – not especially Christmassy. But it’s easy to make lots of them at once!) My “new” chocolate chip cookie recipe is just the old recipe with brown rice flour and oat flour subbed in for the wheat flour. That’s it.
Birthdays in my extended family often involve cheesecake, and the favored Thanksgiving dessert is chocolate pie. Both of these are already gluten-free (at least, our family recipes for them are) except for the crusts. We could make alternative crusts. And someday, maybe we will. But for now, we’ve just begun setting a bit of the filling aside so I can eat it without the crust.
You can also create all-new substitutions. For instance, instead of remaking an existing cookie recipe, I might swap it out for one with no offending ingredients.
Recap
So let’s summarize. My three tips for enjoying the holidays when you have food sensitivities are:
- Focus on traditions that don’t involve food, even if that means you have to create a few more.
- Be mindful of the holiday foods you already can eat.
- Tweak family favorite recipes so you can eat those, too.
It is great advice to focus less on food, and more on other things. We do an advent calendar that is based on learning about other cultures & traditions. Sometimes that means food, sometimes not.
Thanks for writing with us for the carnival!!
Oh, how fun! We’ve done “Christmas around the world” things before, but I never thought to put that together with our Advent calendar – what a great idea!
Thanks! I would actually love to hear more about #1 – traditions that don’t involve food. I feel like potlucks are everywhere. My food issues are such that I really cannot tolerate social eating without repercussions, even if there are foods I can theoretically eat (no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no soy and only recently some GF grains). It’s too stressful for me to eat standing or moving or in the midst of company, so then I end up going long stretches of time without food, which is no good, either! It’s tough to be social and not be eating! I know I need to reset my stress response, but that’s not done in a day!
Oh, I hear you; believe me! When you have food allergies/sensitivities, it is very frustrating that fellowship so often involves food. Church stuff is particularly hard for me. 🙁
I’m blessed to have extended family that works at making sure there’s always something I can eat. But it’s definitely easiest to arrange for non-food-centric traditions within one’s immediate family!
This is a really positive outlook! Thanks for sharing. I love the idea of focusing on the “Yes.”
Great suggestions for dealing with a problem that makes the holidays much more complicated. I’ve had good luck with substituting brown rice flour for the other flour in baked products with eggs, too.
Good to know it’s worked for someone else, too; thank you for visiting!
I love the idea of focussing on the yes, you are right it is important to stay positive especially at this time of year!
Thank you for sharing 🙂
This is my First time finding your page. I was very impressed with your page on “why christians don’t celebrate Passover”. Then I was confused on your promoting pagan worship through Christmas? We definitely don’t thank the Earth, but God who created the earth for all we are blessed with.💝
I don’t promote pagan worship. I do celebrate the incarnation, as an opportunity to praise God for His mighty works. If you read my posts on Christmas, you’ll see that Christmas at our house is heavily Christ-centered.
I’m not sure what your last sentence is referencing. I don’t thank the Earth for anything, and I’m legitimately puzzled by what you think this has to do with Christmas.