As the year winds down, many of us find ourselves in the thick of the so-called “holiday season,” a time of lighting candles, setting tables, dancing late, staying home, enjoying (or surviving) family dinners, inventing new traditions, or opting out entirely. This year, navigating the cheer might feel especially fraught given just how grim the global landscape continues to feel. And yet, if we’re going to keep working toward the worlds we want to live in, we need more than endurance. We need joy, pleasure, and reminders that there are still things worth celebrating.

These tensions sit at the heart of our next issue, CELEBRATE, which will launch early in the new year. The issue explores what it means to celebrate in our current moment: to come together, to mark time, to honour both the sacred and the everyday, and to pursue pleasure without losing political clarity. Celebration, we believe, is not frivolous. It is a site of labour and power, of care and exclusion, of possibility and contradiction, and, at times, a radical act.

In the months ahead, CELEBRATE will explore celebrations of all kinds: from queer potlucks to Nigerian weddings to meals enjoyed alone. It will challenge you to consider commensality as a tool of resistance and of oppression, asking how celebration can build community or draw lines around who belongs and who doesn’t.

To whet your appetites before we officially launch the new issue, we’re sharing some pieces from the FFJ archive that we hope might help spark conversation at your next festive event, fill the table at your next holiday gathering (or quiet night in), or offer some company if this season feels lonely or complicated.

CELEBRATE FAMILY

FFJ editor Isabela loves a good family-focused tearjerker: check out her family’s recipe for festive lobster cantonese, imagined from her mom’s childhood growing up in Jewish Montréal with parents who have long since passed on.

Similarly, her “A Treasure for my Daughter” podcast for our first issue, MILK, digs into the personal and political complexities of maternal sacrifice through the lens of her mom’s fluffy Passover matzo balls.

CELEBRATE TASTE

In past holiday seasons, we’ve shared editor and contributor-curated recipes for everything from Canadian butter tarts, Icelandic flatbreads, chickpea confit, latkes, and pies. Did you know that butter tarts were invented by the Filles Du Roi, young women sent to Canada in the late 1600s by Louis XIV to marry, cook, clean, and procreate in support of France’s efforts to colonize New France?

If you’re looking for a festive dessert worthy of your politics, check out this recipe for sea moss panna cotta developed by Elise Schloff for our SEA issue. Elise reimagines coastal foodways by shifting the focus from seafood to seaweed — with delicious results.

CELEBRATE LOVE

There’s a reason we all reach for romcoms at this time of year, and two pieces in particular from our archive put love front and centre. Tender Seas by Megumi Kowai probes gender roles in Japan through the story of a man who lost his wife in the 2011 Tohoku tsunami and is sure to make you want to hold your loved ones a little tighter this week.

Meanwhile, Bottomless, written by Shena Cavallo for our BODY issue, makes the case for an unashamed form of self-love: putting oneself — one’s whims, intuitions, and appetites — first. Both of these pieces have audio readings by the authors available for premium subscribers.

We also want to take this opportunity to let you know that Zoë will be stepping away from her role as co-founding editor for a year, starting in January, to focus on a new project involving diapers, milk, and very little sleep. While you won’t hear from her while CELEBRATE is being rolled out, the issue has very much been shaped and edited collaboratively — and with the support of our amazing guest editors, Apoorva and Austin.

And finally, as we move into the last days of the year, we want to say thank you. We’re deeply grateful to be in community with you. So, however you’re moving through this season — celebrating loudly, quietly, ambivalently, or not at all — we wish you many moments of warmth and nourishment. See you in the new year!

Did you enjoy reading FFJ this year? If so, please consider supporting us by becoming a premium subscriber. We recently launched our Feminist Food Friends collective, and premium subscribers can attend our events for free. We also offer premium subscribers audio readings done by writers themselves (not AI robot voices!) and exclusive resource round-ups.

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CELEBRATE the Season