I think the comments here are better than the actual article which strikes me as over-romanticizing kitchen work and attributing exclusive benefits to it that are simply not exclusive. A home-cooked meal is nice, but it's not my top priority nor is it what friends are family are looking for, which is quality time with loved ones.

Just food for thought... I have been cooking seriously for about 30 years... Over the past week and a half, I've probably averaged 4 hours in the kitchen every day. I love to cook. But... it is also my way of avoiding sitting down with everyone else and talking, talking, talking or playing the endless games or other stuff. See, I'm in the kitchen making life wonderful for everyone else. I am the best cook they all know, after all. So, I cook fabulous meals for hours, then I crash shortly after our late dinners. My "social time" with everyone else is extremely limited... to the dinner table itself. I am sure that family members come to stay with us for a week and leave and think that they hardly ever really saw me. That is painful to admit, but it is the truth. I use cooking to isolate myself, and I both like the isolation and know that there is something wrong with it.

Love is love. If people have to choose between a home cooked meal and a heart-to-heart conversation on the sofa, I know what they will choose. Both Mary and Martha are important.

I enjoyed reading your article very much. I have two children. My daughter is in college and my son is a senior in high school. It is and has been a joy for me to cook for my family for over 24 years. You said: “But it’s not only our families who benefit from the flavors and fellowship of our tables. Christmas can provide a chance for us to consider others we can include in that sphere of warmth and safety and belonging.” We (parents) have an awesome power to create a “sphere of warmth and safety and belonging” for our family and friends. My husband and I enjoy listening to our children and their friends' conversations at the dinner table. We have had wonderful conversations and have been able enjoy and get to know better our children's friends a well. Thank you!

Some people (not just women) communicate love through hospitality, which includes cooking/baking. I happen to be one of those people and have been like this since childhood. True, my question to Sylvia about if she taught her children to say "thank you" may sound as if I think she is partly to blame. Perhaps she is. Children learn how they live. Then again, maybe her adult children are just spoiled and thoughtless despite how she demonstrated good manners in her home. Our country has become increasingly rude without helping out others and saying "please" and "thank you", and that's with all age groups, not just the younger gendrations.

very Catholic

I'm an overseas worker currently on furlough and that has involved a ton of traveling. I've stayed in at least twenty different homes in the past four months and have experienced the best and worst of people's attempts at hospitality. I can honestly say, from that sampling, that my sense of being welcomed, loved, and included from these displays of "hospitality" have had very little to do with whether or not there was a home cooked meal involved. In fact, from two of the most shining examples - one involved dinner at a restaurant and another involved only store-bought coffee cake served by the husband while the wife and I chatted. It's disappointing that "good hospitality" seems equated here with "home cooked meal". While that might be a part of it, it might not be. Hospitality has so much more to do with a posture of welcome and acceptance than it does with how many kitchen gadgets were used in the making of a meal.

Silvia, I'm so sorry to hear how unappreciative your family has been. You are right - you can't change a selfish heart. Only God can. Kathi's suggestion implies (perhaps unintentionally) that you are somehow at fault for not raising them to say thank you. None of us is perfect, but I imagine you did a fine job with your children and did indeed teach them to say thank you, but the lesson never sank in. If I were in your place, I'd spend next Christmas somewhere like Hawaii (or wherever you want to go) and let my kids do Christmas on their own. Merry Christmas!

Silvia, Did you raise your children to say "thank you"? Perhaps this Christmas you should tell them how you feel. People aren't going to know how you feel if you keep silent. Not every family behaves as yours. I am very appreciative of my parents and my childhood and try to remember the good things from those years. My childhood was not perfect by any means, but if your children are complaining then tell them to get over themselves.

I'm sure that a whole lot of these women would disagree with me, especially now on Christmas Eve but I have something to say. I was "that mom." Cooked family "favorites" every year, shopped extra early, made sure to personalize gifts and go that extra mile, you name it I did it. And you know what? They never cared. Period. I knew they were selfish but I guess part of me always thought that one day they would wake up and appreciate it. Boy was I wrong. And now I have nothing left to show for it. They gripe about the toys they didn't get as kids and how "everyone had it better than they did." Just goes to show, you can spend all the time you want to in the kitchen, make the holidays magical or whatever, but you can't change a selfish heart. You better make sure you're in there cooking for some other reason than your family's appreciation because in the end you might be just like me: stuck with a whole lot of wasted time and and a whole lot of wasted energy.