Bust out the gelatin! It's Christmastime!

I ran into a LOT of Christmassy recipes in the past year, so looks like December will be a whole month of them. I originally posted about Marye Dahnke's Salad Book (1954) in the summer because of course I think of salads in the summer, but the book also includes a bunch of salads that seem holiday-ready (and of course loaded with Jell-O since there's always room for it-- even at a big holiday feast).

Some, I've just decided to call holiday-themed because of their color schemes. Tomato Aspic in Green Peppers is an easy one-- red inside of green!

Plus, you get to garnish slices of aspic-filled pepper with American cheese before serving-- easy to cut it into holiday shapes using tiny cookie cutters to be even more in the holiday style. (Nothing is classier than a star-shaped Kraft single sinking into tomato glop.)

If you want to get a little crazier with the flavors but stick to the red-and-green color scheme, the Cream Cheese Cucumber Ring might be for you. 

Okay, the gelatin might be only barely green, since it's mostly cream cheese and the only green part will be grated cucumber. You can always throw in a little green food coloring if you want. The real trick is that the onion-and-cucumber flavored cream cheese gelatin is topped with canned pear halves dyed bright red by cinnamon candies. Top with mayonnaise or salad dressing for a real(ly confusing) holiday "treat."

The book includes plenty of explicitly holiday salads too, though. I thought Poinsettia Salad might be one of those mostly-sweet gelatin salads topped with a marshmallow cut into a flower-ish shape and dipped in red sugar, but I was wrong.

It's tomatoes cut "into 5 sections, poinsettia fashion" (which sounds pretty difficult) and filled with cream-cheese-and-mayonnaise gelatin cubes. (Dahnke must have really liked an excuse to just straight-up eat blocks of mayonnaisey cream cheese. I might be close to agreeing if it weren't for the mayo!)

There's also a Holiday Salad swapping out the cream cheese for avocado if you feel like being just a little more health-conscious.

And it's easier to make because you don't have to try to pretend the tomatoes are flowers-- just slice 'em up for garnish!-- and you don't have to cut the gelatin into little cubes. (You do have to be able to unmold it, though, so maybe not as easy as you'd hope....)

The Holiday Luncheon Plate is supposedly good enough to make "Santa Claus himself... stop to sample this handsome mold." (I can't say as I'd ever think to call a Jell-O mold "handsome," but the '50s were a weird time.)

I have to admit this predominantly fruity version sounds much more palatable than anything so far (especially if you swap out the mayo for yogurt), but it BETTER be good-- 12 to 16 servings is a lot.

The Christmas Buffet Mold is a smaller and more simplified version-- you just have to be willing to forego cream cheese and gnaw on the occasional wood chip bit of diced celery to enjoy this one.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip to the past, when pretty much any occasion-- Christmas! Easter! Presidents' Day! Washday! Thursday!-- called for a big plate of food suspended in some reconstituted powder derived from collagen.