A Dippy Christmas Tradition

My family has its holiday traditions, such as opening up gifts on Christmas Eve, and playing games on Christmas day. When the children were young, it was board games and puzzles. Now, it's video games and card games.

The traditions vary as the years go by, but one ritual remains the same. Each year we have my mother-in-law's barbeque and cream cheese dip with potato chips. My husband makes the dip, and the only thing that has changed is he uses a stand mixer now instead of a hand beater, but the recipe remains the same.

Origins
No one is quite sure where the recipe came from, but my husband's mother and his aunt always served this snack over the Christmas holidays. His mother claimed she came up with it one afternoon when she was asked to bring an appetizer to a party. His aunt claims she discovered it in a magazine, and modified it to suit her family's taste.

By the time I joined the family, the good-natured dispute over the origin of the dip, referred to simply as BBQ dip was as much a part of the holidays as the dip itself.

Passing down the Recipe
When my husband and I moved to Phoenix in the summer of 1986, we brought with us the few necessities needed to start a new life. The recipe for BBQ dip was not among them.

That first Christmas my husband called his mother and asked for the recipe. I expected there to be at least one very secret ingredient, but the recipe could not be simpler:

2 eight-ounce packages of cream cheese at room temperature
1 16-ounce bottle of BBQ sauce
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of dried onion flakes
About 1/4 cup of milk

Use a hand mixer to blend the cream cheese and BBQ sauce together. Add the dried onion and enough milk to make the dip creamy and pink, mixing at low speed. Chill for an hour and serve with potato chips, the kind with ridges. The ridges are an important part of the recipe, his mother told him. Flat chips just break off in the dip.

The Next Generation
When the kids were young, and Christmas Eve day was nearly intolerable for the waiting, my husband would come home from work and the kids would help him make BBQ dip.

One year, I forgot to get the potato chips, an error left undiscovered until after six o'clock in the evening. There was near panic. What if the stores had all closed? I ventured out, leaving my husband and kids to wonder if this would be the year without dip.

I returned triumphant in my quest. There would be BBQ dip after all.

Our kids are grown now, but my husband still makes the dip, and the kids still help. Hopefully, someday, their own kids will help them make BBQ dip, and carry on the Christmas tradition.