52 Ancestors Week 50: Traditions

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 50

This week's theme is "Traditions." Many families have special traditions for this time of year. This week, write about a tradition that your family enjoys (or doesn't enjoy!) and the ancestors that it brings to mind. Do you know who started that tradition? Who changed it over the years?

Those elves go through this every year....

    With Christmas 2022 just around the corner, I do what I always do around this time of year. I look back at all the Christmas traditions my family has had over the years. The biggest of course were the Christmas Eve parties my parents would throw every year. I alluded to them in a previous blog and I think now would be a great time to take a deep dive into the Christmas Eve parties of the past and tell you what they were all about. It was a time honored tradition and I'm going to share it with you all! I just hope you like fried calamari!

Christmas Eve 1996/7ish, I want to say. I could be
wrong. 

    I'm not really sure when the Christmas Eve parties all started to be honest. All I remember growing up was having to get up early and help clean up the house while my parents spent most of the day in the kitchen preparing for the feast. And what a feast we would have! Have you ever heard of the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes? It's definitely a thing. Learn about it here. We had a slight variation of that tradition where fish is served instead of other types of meat.

    Our feast largely consisted of squid served in many, many ways. We'd have it fried, in sauce, stuffed, in salad and so much more. It was basically "Squid fest." Don't worry. We had gnocchi, haddock and shrimp for the non squid lovers who came to our party. Are you hungry, yet?

     Preparation and cleaning took a while. However, we always found the time to go to my grandmother Ollie's house and pick her up and she'd stay with us up until New Year's Day. Her sisters and my dad's cousins were also invited to the festivities. So, there was no shortage of genealogical gold that evening, believe me. Italians talk, man. Especially after a few glasses of vino. ;) Grandpa Hamel and my other grandmother were also in attendance every once in a while and more conversations of the past were had and photos were shared. And taken. More on that later.

Aunt Mimi!

    Before we picked up my grandmother in Haverhill, there was one stop we had to make first. We drove to my third grandmother, Mary Matorian's house and visit with her for a while. I say she was like my third grandmother because she kind of was. She looked after my brother and I when we were little and we still visited her when we grew up. She and her husband Peter always kept the door open for us. They were very nice people!

    We exchanged gifts and talked about what our plans were for the evening. She and her husband would go to her niece Judy's house and celebrate there. I think one year my father gave her some squid leftovers. Would you believe we even HAD leftovers in the first place? That's pretty hard to believe, isn't it? She did make us stuffed grape leaves, though and my brother and I hid them in the back of the fridge for "safe keeping" when we returned home. Did they survive the night? You tell me. 

    By five o'clock pm EST on Christmas Eve.....the invasion would begin. And guess whose job it was to take everyone's coats?  Not my brother who was tending to some computer issues or some other random thing. Not my parents who were cooking up a storm. Definitely not my grandma Ollie as she was parked on the couch watching whatever Christmas special was on television. Yeah. It was all me. How'd you guess?! It wasn't the dogs.

Cousin Joe and Aunt Louise trying to win the
lottery!

    Taking care of the jackets and everything wasn't really that bad. Giving everyone the correct jacket at the end of the night was the tricky part. Still, I had a good time and took it in stride. I had to be good for goodness sake and marching up and down the stairs all night did wonders for my calves. ;)

    We did have a lot of guests, though. I may have talked about all of this in a previous blog. But, it bears repeating. We'd have a ton of my parents' friends over along with family members. You've heard of the FAN club, right? Friends and neighbors? Yeah. We had that covered. Practically everyone they knew was invited to the feast. No wonder I got confused as to whose coat was whose. You would, too. Don't lie.

    Now, you might be thinking to yourself. "Chris, didn't you have anyone to play with during the festivities?" To that I say "Yes. Yes, I did. Other than my brother, of course." And we had many epic gaming sessions every Christmas Eve throughout the late '80s, '90s and into the 2000s. 

Mi famiglia.

    My cousins and I would traditionally hold tournaments on whatever gaming system we had at the time. In the 1990s, it was the tried and true console called the Sega Genesis followed by the Nintendo Game Cube, Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo Switch. I uhhh....think we know who ultimately won the "Console War" of the '90s now don't we. This commercial aged like fine wine. Nintendo definitely ended up playing the long game.

 

Note: I did play classic Nintendo. But, that was at friend's house. I've even taught my grandmother how to play a couple of the old Sega games. She was quite good! Though, I don't think she knew what to make of "Sonic the Hedgehog". Bit too fast for her!!

    Once I graduated to the Game Cube and my cousins were old enough (I'm the second oldest of the cousins.), we would play games like Mario Kart: Double Dash, Super Smash Bros and various other party games of the era. We always had a great time and eventually we were all called downstairs to take pictures like the one above.

    That picture was one of the rare instances where we ALL looked at the same camera. Everyone was taking pictures of us like we were stars on the red carpet or something. Some of us hammed it up more than others. Probably me. ;)

    The real star of the show was this traditional dessert my father made every Christmas eve. Gaze in wonder at its simplicity. You take:

* Lady Fingers

* TWO types of pudding (Chocolate and Vanilla)

* Blueberries

* Raspberries

* Strawberries

* Whipped cream

    Put them all together and you get this delicious trifle made with love that everyone loved.  It wasn't always the fried calamari that people asked about when they came over. It was always "Did your father make his famous dessert?" Yes, he did. It saddens me that was actually allergic to part of it when I was growing up. I was allergic to chocolate for the longest time. But, I got over it somehow. 

    It's okay, though. I still had some of the delectable dessert. My father often made me a personal cup of his famous dessert without the chocolate pudding so I wasn't left out. That was a good thing. It really was tasty!

Chances are good my grandfather took
this picture.

      Now, it wasn't all just gaming until it was time to open presents or anything. I did visit with my relatives and they'd tell me various stories about my great-grandparents or some other family member. We all had a great time and the parties continued even as certain guests either passed away or moved to another part of the country. 

    Parts of them remained in our memories and we even have a few Christmas three ornaments memorializing those who are no longer with us like both of my grandmothers. We have my maternal grandmother's angel and an ornament from grandma Ollie's tree that we always put under the star.

    In a way, their spirit remained long after they were gone. I like to think they were still watching us. For example, I remember one Christmas Eve in the mid 2000s we were talking about Grandma Hamel and suddenly this stuffed bear that played holiday songs when you pressed its paws suddenly came to life and played a digital version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

Jim? You wanna get your foot off of
 Giuseppe's table?

    We all had a good laugh. Christmas to me is full of memories like that. It's always a good time to celebrate with friends and family and to this day we still have our yearly celebrations. They may be down scaled a bit due to the pandemic and other factors. But, the feelings are definitely there and we still have a great time. 

    Some of the tried and true Christmas traditions like having fried calamari or playing video games have been passed down to my brother and he passed them down to his kids. The circle, my friends, is now complete.

    Good traditions like the Christmas Eve parties are a great way to cement familial bonds with friends and family alike. It's good that they have continued up to the present. However, part of me still can't help but look back at all those Christmas Eves of years gone by where I'd play with my cousins or talk to my grandmothers about growing up in Haverhill. All I have are good memories of those days and I'm glad I'm able to share at least a few of them this week. I hope everyone has a happy holiday!

See ya next time!

Mangia!