When I was younger, I thought our Christmas meal was the same as EVERY American’s on Christmas day. This illusion lasted until my first year of college, when a news reporter came around asking what unique foods we eat on Christmas Day. I was stumped and shrugged: “Well, the same as anybody – pasta, sausage and peppers…” My roommates interrupted me, laughing, “You eat PASTA on Christmas Day!!!”
Gee, I guess I thought everyone was Italian or something!
I have fond memories of Christmas meals with my Italian side. Besides regular pasta, there was manicotti, anchovy pasta (yuk, but some members of the family absolutely love it!) and braciole. For dessert, the table would be laden with oranges, pomegranates, figs, and nuts in the shell in large bowls. Nutcrackers and nut picks sprinkled around like so many tools in a woodshop as shells littered the white cloth like sawdust. Even roasted chesnuts (in the oven, not over an open fire!).
And the cookies. Oh cookie heaven: angel wings, pizzelles, cinnamon crescents and more I don’t even know the name of, but best of all was Grandma’s “dog biscuits” – rectangular shaped cookies she rolled out of some press and cut into rectangles. Then sprinkled with sugar till they sparkled like diamonds. They baked up hard and dry (hence “dog biscuits”) but sweet and perfect for dunking into coffee! Unfortunately, this recipe and the cookie press disappeared with time.
Floating over the food and the blinking off-and-on-again colored lights on the artificial tree are the sound memories. Do you have those too? The rise and fall of Italian woven loosely with English into the same sentence. A heavy quilt of verbiage that always sounded like arguing even when it wasn’t! Echoing through the house, above the glowing television set the cousins and I all gathered around, watching holiday specials.
If you think planning and creating a holiday meal isn’t worth the trouble, I ask you – would I have such vivid memories of my family’s Christmas meals if we didn’t gather like this every year? I would have forgotten. The years and years of following the same traditions imprinted them firmly in my mind, and make Christmas dinner a meal I look back on fondly, and look forward to deeply each year!
Family meal time is an important memory-making time.
Do you have a favorite holiday meal memory?
Brett Martin
Sunday 23rd of December 2012
The traditions- food or otherwise- they are what makes holidays so special!
Christmas isn't Christmas to me without Friendly's Jubilee Roll- because each Christmas Eve I'd go to mass with my grandparents, and on the way home we stopped at Friendlys for the Jubilee Rolls. I don't know if I even like it or not, but that's always in the house for Christmas Eve. My mom made cookies nightly throughout December. EVERY night a new kind of Cookie. She was nutballs. But its part of the tradition and woven into my memories, you know? I don't make as many as she did but I make a lot- the traditions are so wonderful
Brett Martin
Sunday 23rd of December 2012
The traditions- food or otherwise- they are what makes holidays so special!
Christmas isn't Christmas to me without Friendly's Jubilee Roll- because each Christmas Eve I'd go to mass with my grandparents, and on the way home we stopped at Friendlys for the Jubilee Rolls. I don't know if I even like it or not, but that's always in the house for Christmas Eve. My mom made cookies nightly throughout December. EVERY night a new kind of Cookie. She was nutballs. But its part of the tradition and woven into my memories, you know? I don't make as many as she did but I make a lot- the traditions are so wonderful