The Holidays at Home

1965. Jim is second row from the bottom, far right. I was originally front center but a bout of nausea caused the nun to bring me into the nearby sacristy for a whiff of smelling salts; then back to the photo opportunity, though now just steps away from the sacristy door, just in case...

As our staff and volunteer crew at the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation prepare for our Oranges & Ornaments Festival of Trees, I can't help wallowing in the traditions of the 43 Christmases I spent in Brooklyn before moving to a place that never sees snow. Well, maybe my West Orange County friends experienced snow once or twice, but at least you didn't have to shovel it.

Growing up, there were at one time two dozen Italian family members living on my block: a pair of great-grandparents; two sets of grandparents; and all the various progeny that followed. You couldn't get away with anything because there was often one of many first cousins once removed lurking nearby, who just happened to see you slip a box of Milk Duds into your jacket pocket up at the candy store. I deny ever having taken part in such a scheme.

The holiday season began, naturally, with Thanksgiving. That involved dinner with grandma and grandpa upstairs, followed by a visit to grandma and grandpa down the block. The food never stopped coming, and a traditional American Thanksgiving feast was considered a starter. These people added plates of antipasto (larger and more elaborate than today's charcuterie boards), handmade ravioli, trays of baked ziti, meatballs, and enough desserts to satisfy every sweet tooth in all those mouths.

It was like they were practicing for Christmas, which was another extravaganza entirely. Take everything that was consumed at Thanksgiving though, as a precursor, add an entire Christmas Eve dinner based in seafood to the mix. That was usually staged ay my house, whose tiny back porch had been converted into a tiny dining room sometime in the late 1940s. I'll never figure out how so many people managed to fit into such a small space, but somehow we did. Of course, those seated at the wall side of the table were locked in until it was time to leave for midnight Mass.

The seafood fare was based in a tradition called the Feast of the Seven Fishes. As traditional Catholics, we abstained from meat on Christmas Eve, but made up for it with those seven fishes. (Some families do nine... or even thirteen!) I shied away from fish when I was younger and so was served the compensation dish known as buttered macaroni. The adults and those annoying siblings and cousins who ate everything dined on:

• salted cod, also known to Italians as baccalá

• shrimp cocktail

• deep-fried calamari

• octopus salad

• stuffed clams

• linguine with clam sauce

• fried smelts

As a choirboy at St. Ephrem's school from 1964 to 1969 (it was a long haul, believe me), we'd file into the darkened church holding electric candles, with everybody's families crowding the pews and craning their necks to spot Jimmy or Joey or Johnny. It was easy to spot me: I was the one trying to figure out how to twist my candle just right in order to have it light up the darkness as we all began singing "The First Noel."

And the church reeked of garlic, lemon, and fish.

There was no sleeping in on Christmas Day, and gifts were opened quickly as I had to leave to go sing at other Masses. But, by dinner time we were all sitting at grandma and grandpa down the block's groaning board, which had been added to by one of those folding aluminum picnic tables and a card table for the youngest kids. The extra length was necessary to accommodate second-generation family from New Jersey and Long Island, who had moved off the block after getting married and having children. They also brough vegetables and sweets, and presents, and candy... By six o'clock we were sitting around like walruses, half asleep, though I remember one year getting caught reading grandma's copy of Peyton Place. (She had two books in the house: the Bible, and Peyton Place. After all those Masses, I wasn't in the mood for the spiritual.)

These were unforgettable days and nights, and they went on for many years. Never have I felt more secure than knowing I was surrounded by generations of family who knew I belonged, even if many of them often got all the cousins' names wrong.

I'm so looking forward to our Oranges & Ornaments Festival of Trees. Seeing all those lights and decorations and happy faces will bring me right back home...

Aunt Theresa, Uncle Joe, Dad, Mom, and grandma-down-the-block.