Someday soon, we all will be together,
If the fates allow
Hang your brightest star above the highest bough..
HANK: I'm a sap. And I embrace it. That song always make me teary, and it's not only because I'm often wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. My pals know to expect New Years cards. It's not because I'm Jewish, it's more because I'm behind.
At the urging of my siblings and me, my family actually celebrated every holiday you could get presents for. My mom drew the line at live Easter chicks, as any wise mom would do. But otherwise, we attempted to cash in at every opportunity.
One year, though, when I had just turned 16, my mom drew the line. We're Jewish, she said. No more Christmas trees. Which seems logical now, but didn't, then. My sibs were 14, 10, 9 and 8. And I knew they wanted a tree.
I had just gotten my driver's license, so The Night Before Not-Christmas, my sister Nina and I said we were going to the movies. We took the car, and we did go to the movies. But just to the concession stand. We got popcorn. Then we went to the grocery, the A and P, and got cranberries. And we also purchased the last of the scrawny old Christmas trees, not even good enough to be a Charlie Brown tree.
We hid the tree behind our barn, then scurried upstairs with our popcorn and cranberries, and stayed up for hours stringing them. (Is there a trick to this, by the way? The cranberries got very mushy.)
Then late late late, we sneaked outside and brought in the tree. Everyone else was, um, snug in their beds. We set it up, and decorated it, and put the presents underneath it. (Oh yeah, we still had presents. It was just the tree that was prohibited. Go figure.) Anyway, all finished, we scampered back upstairs.
The next morning--we got up early early as usual, and hid in the living room. It worked perfectly. We got to see the shocked and surprised looks on our parents faces. "Santa came!" Mom said. (And I guess that's how they felt when they saw our faces as little kids.) And to this day we still remember "the year without the tree."
Memories, anyone?
RO: My gosh, that sounds wonderful. Christmas Eve was always the big celebration in my family - the day itself was anti-climactic. On Christmas Eve we'd all gather at Grandma's house - my mother was one of eight, so I have a zillion cousins, and yes, being Italian, most of the males are named Anthony, or some version.
(It's even more complicated now that one cousin Pam, whose father was Anthony, and who has a sister named Toni, has married a Tony, and they have a son named Anthony. Another cousin Anthony had a son named Anthony and he married a Pam.)
Anyway my grandmother would make an antipasto that was a work of art,
and god help you if you picked at anything before everyone saw it. She also prepared seven different types of fish, it's a Neapolitan thing, including bacala, which we kids never touched.
My mother would make zeppole and struffoli, two of the most fattening things on the planet. It was an orgy of eating.
There was always one aunt who gave great presents, and another who gave us all the same thing - usually a boring, practical gift like an umbrella, which is the last thing you want when you're seven - so after the first cousin opened his gift, we all knew what we got, and had to fake being excited. Other than that, it was big fun...and I still make struffoli.
So did you have an official tree the next year?
HANK: You know, I think we didn't. I was a senior in high school, then, way too cool for such things. Nina was probably on a date. The other kinds were older. And way too knowledgeable for such things. As will happen. Which makes it all the sweeter. I'm off to look up struffoli.
ROBERTA: Oh my gosh, I wish I'd been at Ro's house for Christmas Eve! Especially that antipasto! I can't even remember what we ate CE, because my mother was busy shopping for stocking stuffers. We were all crazy for stockings. She'd go out the day before Christmas to Two Guys, a discount store that must have been insanely busy, just to be sure each stocking was crammed to the top. My aunt had knitted all of us a two-footer with our names on it, plus Santa's head with an actual fuzzy white beard, leaping reindeer, and so on. It's hanging up by the chimney with care right now!
JAN: Once I heard about the seven fish dinner, I wanted to be Italian. The half-Polish, half-Irish thing didn't many Christmas rituals, except that we always had to have Kielbasa and horse radish on little rye breads for every holiday. (Luckily, the horrible Irish food was reserved for St. Patrick's Day.) Probably my best Christmas memory is just after college. My room-mate Beth was Jewish, with limited Christmas experience, so I got this inspiration to fill a stocking full of little presents for her. She was so tickled by this that the next year, she handknitted me a stocking with my name on it.I still hang that stocking by the chimney and for years, Beth and I exchanged stocking stuffers for Christmas. Once we had kids, we made Christmas ornaments together. We still have them and put them up on the tree.
HALLIE: The thing I remember most fondly about Christmas, growing up in Los Angeles, was the night BEFORE the night before Christmas, going out to bag a tree. Every year, my mother would beg my father to bring home a small tree, just about this tall (her size). We'd pile into the family wagon and cruise through Westwood and Santa Monica where, on vacant street corner lots (there were such things back in the olden days), the tree vendors would be set up for the season. We'd hold our noses at the pink Christmas trees,
the silver ones, and the ones laden with fake snow (did the rest of the world have those back then?). Invariably we'd be drawn to the monster trees (what was usually left by that late date) and my father would haggle and we'd all have to squeeze in the front seat for the drive home because the tree would take up the whole back of the wagon, filling the car with that lovely pine smell. And when we got home my mother got her person-sized tree, because that was about the size of the top my father had to cut off to get the thing into the house.
HANK: Yes, decorating the tree is another whole blog. There was the year Mom wanted all red bows. Then we'd all sneak on our favorite ornaments, just one, and eventually the red bows were overtaken by the family treasures.
So--how about you? Traditions and memories? Did you put out milk and cookies? Read The Night Before Christmas? Hang stockings? Make struffoli?
