It's Christmas Eve, and I am making a Mexican pot roast. I hesitate to call it "birria" because that would suggest a height of authenticity I'm not seeking. I didn't use the dark, smoky dried peppers that birria calls for; just jalapeños from the farmers' market. I'm working in the spirit of the old ladies of the U.S. South who would throw a packet of taco seasoning on something, call it "Mexican," and write up the recipe for the church or temple or Junior League cookbook.

Some curiosities of cultural understanding are best accepted at face value. Amanda Beardsley Trulock, coming from Puritan Connecticut, always insisted that Christmas was primarily a Black holiday. From her first Christmas in Georgia in 1837: "I am very busy a fixing my negroes for Christmast, that being a hollowday with them, it is one that is much thought of by us all, and as a matter of course everyone must have a new dress, and their Hats newley trimmed & &, and they think that there is no one that can excel their new Mistress in fashions."

Ten years later, in 1847, Amanda wrote from Arkansas: "Christmast is a great day........

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