Last Friday the Maxwell Institute sponsored a day-long conference on LDS Women’s History, in honor of the innumerable contributions of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. One of the more unexpected and enlightening papers was that of Kate Holbrook, “Women, Jell-O, and Meaning Over Time.” It’s easy to mock the recipes of our mothers and grandmothers involving Jell-O – Jell-O with tuna, Jell-O with pretzels, Jell-O with all kinds of unappetizing additions. Audience laughter supported Kate’s point there. Then she moved on to look at why generations of women had prepared foods for their families, for their pot-lucks, for their invalids, based on Jell-O. There is serious meaning behind the phenomenon, as teased out by a skilled historian, and that meaning changed over time.
Just for fun, and a little bit because of ego, I tweeted this: “So when did the connection of Jello and Mormonism begin? At least by 1898, when the Young Woman’s Journal published a recipe.” I included a link to this old Keepa post, Birth of a Mormon Tradition: Jello!
But this post isn’t really about the significance of Mormon food habits. It’s about – oops, it’s about that label of “Mormon.”
Someone tweeted back today: “You really need to stop using outmoded terms like Mormonism.”
No, no I really don’t have to stop using terms like “Mormonism.” They aren’t outmoded. I don’t, and I won’t.
And it isn’t just because some near-stranger has no right to issue such an imperious order, or because I reject the weaponization of President Nelson’s request. It’s because other terms, those preferred by President Nelson, are simply inappropriate – sacrilegious, even – in contexts like this.
What does the institutional Church have to do with Jell-O? Is there a revealed doctrine of gelatin salads?
How silly, how insulting, how wrong would it be to drag the Savior’s name into an otherwise perfectly acceptable discussion of our people’s long-time affinity for gelatin salads and desserts!
Should I have tweeted “So when did the connection of Jell-O and the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ begin?”
Of course not. That’s hideous.
I admit that I’m not at all nuts about the request to drop “Mormon” and its variants, in any context. I am a Mormon. I have always been a Mormon. I will always be a Mormon. Mormonism is precious to me. My mother’s ancestors were Mormon pioneers. My father was a convert to Mormonism. The Mormon people and the Mormon culture are unquestionably my identity. I study Mormon history, I adore Mormon arts, if there were such a thing as Mormon snow tires or Mormon long division I would no doubt support those who produced or practiced it.
I am trying to be more sensitive to the feelings of those who have strong opinions about jettisoning the Mormon terms when I speak of faith or doctrine or the institutional church.
But if you pay attention, you will notice that I have not abandoned, have no intention of abandoning, the Mormon vocabulary when I’m not speaking of religion, but of culture – especially in contexts where it would be a vain repetition of the Savior’s name to use it in a ludicrous way.
There is no doctrine of Jell-O. I will not mock the sacred by speaking as if there were.
This is good stuff. I am Very Much Mormon VMM, an abbrevation coined by Brooke Walrath a few years ago online. I am a Mormon and I will always be so.
Hmm. “What does the institutional Church have to do with Jell-O?” I fear you are treading dangerously close to apostasy.
Me too
This. Thank you for this.
P.S. Best blog post title ever.
Amen.
Hear, hear!
What a delightful way to begin the day. With my heart warmed I relish the memory of my highly esteemed President Ezra Taft Benson standing at the 21st Ward pulpit in Sacrament Meeting where he sang “A Mormon Boy Am I” with his beloved Flora watching him from the front row.
Ardis, I always thought the French term “aspic” added a certain je ne sais quoi, n’est-ce pas? 🙂
By the way, that monstrosity in the photograph makes me want to barf.
I wouldn’t buy “Mormon snow tires” if they were just regular snow tires advertised in a sense of Mormon affinity for profit motives. We have way too much of that sacrilege. And I’m not good at Math, Mormon or otherwise. But I get your point and I agree wholeheartedly. And I always eat the green, Mormon Jell-O at my Mother-in-law’s no matter what is in it.
Gelatin Desserts? You mean “the salad of the restored gospel?” (I also will refrain from vain repetitions of the Savior’s name, but I cannot resist contributing at least one ludicrous suggestion.)
As a recovering academic editor, I have been arguing within my circles at BYU for almost a year now that we should continue using Mormon in similar situations to Oriental when it modified food and rugs. Adjectives such as these describing specific aspects of cultures (not people) should still be acceptable.
Is that a chef salad encased in gelatin? I am going to vomit.
Also, I completely agree with the post. It seems like simple common sense, so it is ridiculous that someone tweeted back that misguided command.
Lest anyone be in doubt, I found that image by googling “gross jello.”
But while I could never go so far as this pictured monstrosity, I remain a fan of tomato aspic and other less gaudy savory gelatin-themed salads. If you’re ever invited to dinner at my house, or if we ever go out to dinner, please restrain your comments of disapproval.
So pleased to know you are not another ex-Mormon, Ardis! Hear, hear!
As a Mormon who has never lived in Utah and has no pioneer ancestors, I seriously do not understand the meaning of this jello thing. It is such an odd mystery to me! 🙂 I didn’t grow up eating it or know anyone who did. So your picture is totally freaking me out! 😀 So much of this Utah culture is like speaking a foreign language the rest of us don’t understand. I think I was 38 before I heard the term funeral potatoes!
Amy, It has seemed to me that the “jello thing” has been regarded by Mormons as a Mormon thing primarily where Mormons were the dominant culture or where Mormons who grew up in that dominant culture continued to think of it as a Mormon thing after moving elsewhere. In the mid-west, the Lutherans think of it as a Lutheran thing. In at least some places in the southwest Lutherans think of it as a Lutheran thing. It seems it was a largely middle-class American thing during the hey-day of Jello’s popularity.
Aspic, on the other hand, has been a European thing (more in France than elsewhere in my limited experience)as well as an American thing, but much less common in America than Jello. I don’t know whether it has faded from its limited popularity. (I gagged down a serving (of something like the posted picture when I was a 19-year-old missionary and haven’t had the opportunity since. Now I could probably deal politely with one of Ardis’ more restrained versions. 🙂 )
One of my Utah-raised friends in the southwest brought 2 Jello “salads” to a ward potluck — (a) green jello with a single whole carrot in it (b) red jello with a single unpeeled banana in it! I don’t think she admitted to anyone else her being responsible for her cultural commentary in “salad” form. N.b., the kids like the Jello; nobody ate the carrot or the banana.
But, yes, it is a Mormon thang to think that Jello salads are a Mormon thing. But the Church [culture] is not the same everywhere.
A major strain in Kate’s paper, though, is that Jell-O salads and desserts are/were NOT merely a Mormon thing, although they had a fixed place in 20th century Mormon life, as elsewhere. The purpose of her paper was to explore, in a s scholarly way, what such dishes meant within the culture — something that no one commenting here, not having heard her paper, not having the necessary background, can possibly guess at. I can’t do it justice.
JR, excuse me, please, for calling your story of the whole carrot and the whole unpeeled banana utter nonsense. I don’t believe it happened at all, unless it was a jokey or ironic statement. It’s foolish to consider that any sort of comment on Mormons or potlucks or reality.
I’m closing comments now that we have reached the absurd stage of trying to one-up each other in the grossness department. That spits in the faces of the women, Mormon and otherwise, of the 20th century. It’s insulting to those of us who still eat Jell-O in any form — it’s like being in the Church Office Building cafeteria on prime rib day and having to listen to the remarks of people walking past about how disgusting it is to eat meat that isn’t burnt to the color and texture of dead tires.
And that distracts from the serious purpose of this post.
JR acknowledges in a follow-up that the stupid person who brought the “salads” with a whole carrot and a whole unpeeled banana thought she was funny. In reality, she was ridiculing her neighbors. In no way was it an authentic expression of a food offering, and it should not have been presented that way in response to Amy’s puzzlement over Wasatch Front food customs.