A recently published study in Britain has noted the further decline of the Sunday roast lunch eaten at home, writes Mary Corcoran.
People now eat out more, eat meals separately within the same household, and eat more often on their own. Sharing a meal together has significance beyond the simple consumption of food. It is a symbolic declaration of the togetherness of the couple, family or group, and it also acts as an important mechanism of social bonding.
When my siblings and I were coming of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Sunday roast lunch was an institution in our suburban Dublin home. When you grow up in a large family (six siblings) food and its consumption take on very important material and symbolic value. We were fairly typical of suburban families at the time: a large brood of children, cared for full-time by our mother while our father knuckled down to the good provider role.
As children growing into adulthood we were always hungry, and always watchful of any member of the tribe receiving a larger ration. I seem to remember that my feminist teeth were cut on the clear gender distinctions embedded in the size of the apple tart slices apportioned to me and to my brothers.
When we were younger, my father often compared meal times in our home to feeding time at the zoo. He wasn't joking. But as we grew into adulthood my parents saw the Sunday lunch as their personal contribution to the lofty project of participatory democracy. The eight of us sat around the table on Sunday afternoons, engaging in raucous debates about politics, nationalism, feminism, communism and whatever was the pressing issue of the day. For us children it was a space in which we could - in today's jargon - test our parents' boundaries.
We wanted to see how much it would take to convince them of "our position" on politics, contraception, divorce, and so on. Occasionally our number was augmented by an unsuspecting guest, who could well end up in the eye of the storm raging around the table. By hosting this open forum, my parents kept an important line of communication open to us and to our friends, especially during those times when parent-child relationships were particularly fraught.
Nevertheless, my parents' openness had limits. They were frequently nonplussed by some of the views expressed, and bemused by those who expressed them. The conduct of these debates at a raised decibel level around our table has permanently affected our speaking voices. In our family, we tend not to speak to one another but shout, whether in person or on the phone. It was always very important, you see, to make yourself heard.
I am reminded of this Sunday lunch legacy as we holiday this summer with extended family members home from abroad. For those who emigrated during the 1980s, these weeks in Ireland are a lifeline to the place, family and community they left behind. It is an important opportunity for them and their children (and for us) to nurture the bonds that form the basis of our familial and kin attachment. And where better to do this than around a heavily laden dinner table?
Days at the beach are followed by the communal preparation of a meal to be shared by grandmothers (sadly the grandfathers have passed on), siblings, their partners and a gang of children. Each evening we sit around the table, loudly debating the big and small issues of the day: the awfulness of the Bush regime, the futility of the war in Iraq, the growth of multiculturalism in Ireland, the state of Bertie's relationship, the merits or otherwise of men dyeing their hair, the best way to cook vegetables in a microwave, and so on.
This time is also used for sidebar conversations that allow us to catch up on what has been happening in each others' lives since we last met. And like those Sunday lunches of yesteryear, discussions are conducted at a very high decibel level. As the evenings draw to a close, we are left with hoarse voices and a permanent ringing in our ears.
These meals are precious, not only because of the easy sociability and high humour, but because they (temporarily at least) return the emigrants to the very heart of familial attachment. The distances that separate us, both spatially and metaphorically, collapse in the social interaction around the dinner table.
A few years ago, I interviewed a sample of emigrants who had left Ireland in the 1980s and returned in the 1990s. It was not primarily the "Celtic Tiger" that enticed them back, although there is no doubt that the resurgent economy made their return possible. Rather, they were spurred by a disenchantment with the rampant individualism of life in global cities, and a belief that in Ireland they could once more experience a sense of belonging.
It was often difficult for people to articulate precisely what they meant by this, but generally they expressed a strong attachment to place, and a desire to be more fully embedded within familial and community networks. They longed for the pleasure of being amongst those who most understood them. Sitting around the dinner table arguing heatedly with your hosts, shooting sharp ripostes and letting the sparks fly, may not be unique to Irish culture. But emigrants will tell you that this kind of post-prandial vitality is not often appreciated in polite company abroad. It's simply not the done thing.
We, however, continue to relish the heated debate and the fiery exchanges. And our visiting emigrants love us for it.
Dr Mary P. Corcoran lectures in the Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth.
Breda O'Brien is on holiday