How Teta’s Biscuits, Santa’s Midnight Snack, and an Ancient Egyptian Tree All Connect
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At Teta Loula’s house, Egyptian Christmas was a ritual of its own. The smell of baskot in the oven and a house full of family dipping Teta's baskot in Shay bel laban and having Teta's beid bel basterma for breakfast.
The night before, we left a plate out for Santa on the same plate every year. And in the morning, we checked if he took a bite before running to the tree to see what he left for us. When we started writing this Egyptian cookbook and documenting our Egyptian food traditions, we kept going back to these moments. We wanted to hold on to these small rituals that shaped our Egyptian kitchen. And naturally, we began asking where things actually come from.
The tree.
The baskot.
Nawa3em el 3id.
All of it.
That curiosity took us much further back than we expected, all the way to one of the oldest stories in Egyptian heritage: Isis and Osiris.
Osiris was tricked by his brother Set into lying inside a beautiful chest, which Set sealed and threw into the Nile. The chest drifted until it reached Byblos, where a tamarisk tree grew around it and held the body of Osiris inside its trunk.
Isis searched for him everywhere until she found that tree. She freed him, brought him home, and when Set later tore him into pieces, she searched again, gathering him together with the kind of persistence only she had. She brought him back long enough to conceive Horus, and Osiris became the god who oversees what comes after life, a symbol of return, renewal, and continuity.
Because of this story, certain trees, especially evergreens, became symbols of life that does not disappear. Even in winter. Egyptians used green branches and fresh plants during Osiris festivals around the solstice to mark the idea of rebirth and the return of life.
And suddenly, the Christmas tree did not feel so foreign.
We are not saying the Christmas tree came directly from Egypt. History is more layered than that. But the idea behind it felt familiar. A green tree standing in the middle of winter, holding on to life. A symbol that things return.
A symbol deeply rooted in this land.
When we realised this, it changed how we saw our own Christmas growing up. Our plate of baskot. Our morning shay bel laban. Our tree covered in ornaments collected over years.
It all felt connected somehow, to Cairo, to our family, and maybe even to something much older.
This is what inspired our Christmas cards and the wrapping we created this year for our Egyptian cookbook and all our holiday orders. The mix of the old, the personal, the Egyptian recipes we grew up with, and the everyday details of the city that shaped us.
And if you are curious about how the biscuits, Santa’s midnight snack, and that ancient Egyptian tree come together, that is exactly why we wrote this.
Author: Mary Sheirf
Teta Loula is an Egyptian cookbook project inspired by my grandmother’s kitchen. I write about Egyptian food the way we actually cook it at home: one step at a time.
Contact: ahlan@tetaloula.com