Christmas Potpourri; 2012 Edition

Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.~ Washington Irving 

Its Christmas Eve morn and I’ve just braved the crowds at Andronico’s, one of the areas high end food stores.  Cora doesn’t see much use for such stores unless we need something that’s actually good to eat; fresh produce, quality meats, cuts that you don’t find at the local market and fish that wasn’t raised on a farm.  Today’s mission was to get some good bread, crusty pain au lavain from San Francisco’s Acme Bakery.  On my way to checkout I grabbed a boxed pandoro, a sweet Italian bread, dusted with powdered sugar to resemble the snow covered Alps. 

Hootch from the family package

Pandoro is a Christmas tradition that goes back to my Italian roots.  Every Christmas season my family would receive a package sent from my mom’s Italian brothers and sisters.  Beginning in November we would anticipate the arrival of il pacco (the package). It would arrive sometime in mid-December, a slightly battered and dented box wrapped in brown paper and twine, dotted with postage stamps.  We gathered round the box as mom cut it open and pulled out newspaper packing which my maternal grandmother (Nonna Maria) would peruse for any interesting news from the old country.  After a few layers of paper, mom would get to the heart of the matter; torrone (nougat candy), pandoro, panetonne (another sweet bread), Perugina chocolates and a bottle or two of some sort of booze, usually VAT 69 or a liqueur such as Sambucca.  And of course there was the one item that I anticipated more than any other, marrons glace – glazed candied chestnuts.  My Zio Georgio always made sure that a big box of marron glaces would be included. 

Matthew is assembling a C3PO watch for his daughter Sophia and embarking on that other (not so) cherished Christmas tradition – assembly.  There are three dreaded words in the Yuletide lingo; adult – assembly - required.  He hasn’t really embraced that annual ritual until the words, “You goddamned son of a bitch,” have rung through the house like Christmas bells. 

Marrons Glace

Many of my family traditions come from Italy; among them the tradition of a fish or seafood dinner on Christmas Eve.  Being a holy day of obligation in the Roman Catholic Church we dutifully followed the Pope’s orders for the day and abstained from meat.  We don’t strictly follow the edict anymore, I’m no longer a Papist and my wife being something of a cafeteria Catholic will eat meat if the cafeteria has it available. 

Christmas Eve and Christmas were above all family festivities, to be celebrated in the home; and even though the family included only the four of us myself, mom, dad and nonna, there was never any thought given to Christmas outside of the home and family.  That all changed with Denise, my first serious girlfriend whose large extended family also celebrated Christmas Eve with a seafood dinner.  And so the call of duty from two families compelled me to satisfy each; Christmas Eve dinner with my family and then a trip to Denise’s home for my second Christmas Eve dinner.  The showpiece of that encore dinner was a seafood pasta in a red sauce adorned with bacalao (salted codfish), a delicacy I’d never had before.  That pasta was advertised to be the best this side of Genoa and so I had high hopes as I scooped up a piece of bacalao with my fork and rolled the red noodles around it.  As soon as that fish hit my tongue I knew that it would not reside in my stomach; not for one instant.  Swallowing that fish would have caused a rushing flood tide of mom’s Christmas Eve meal and so I pocketed the offensive fish in a handy corner of my mouth; “Delicious,” I lied.  That piece of bacalao remained parked in the back of my mouth.  I suppose that it's some sort of chemical reaction between saliva and a hunk of nasty food that makes the taste ever more disgusting the longer it stays there.  The fish grew more toxic by the second and sweat leaked from ever pore as I delicately ate around it, being careful not to accidentally swallow it.  I don’t recall how I managed to finally get rid of that nasty chunk.  I probably feigned a need to use the bathroom where I flushed it back to its original home.  After a couple more Christmas Eve dinners in which I deftly avoided the dreaded bacalao it turned out that Denise and I were not meant to be. 

Christmas Eve afternoon and we’re gathered in front of the fire watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.  I was 12 years old when the show debuted in 1965.  I haven’t passed a Christmas without having watched the season’s classic and my son has watched for each of his 29 years. For generations now a tiny, undersized tree has become known as a Charlie Brown tree.  One year, when our children were just hitting their teens and had the notion that a proper tree should be about 8 feet tall we went out to cut down our own tree.  On a chilly afternoon we roamed the cut-your-own lot in nearby Martinez until we found THE tree which from our perspective looked to be 7 feet tall if an inch.  I bashed away with the saw that was provided and the tree suddenly seemed much smaller.  I asked the attendant to dress up the bottom with his chain saw so that it would fit more easily in our water stand.  After he performed the amputation our mighty tree had diminished to Charlie Brown proportions – about 4 feet, on the optimistic side.

When Cora and I married we continued to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas at my parents’ home until my mom died and then my dad joined us in our home.  Christmas Eve dinner usually consisted of cracked Dungeness crab, crusty bread, white wine and sparkling cider.  Years later we added different varieties of fish and seafood; clam chowder, fish stew, seafood pasta (sans bacalao), gumbo, baked fish, deep fried calamari, sushi and seafood salad.  And every year the dinner has been at our home, either with our small family, or with extended family and friends.  This year Christmas Eve is on loan to my daughter.  She has two toddlers and it’s easier to move the dinner to her home than to schlep the children to our home. 

We’re going through a transition of traditions.  Last year was the first in over 25 that we’ve not had Christmas Dinner at our home.  Our children had dinner with their spouses’ families and so Cora and I, finding ourselves at loose ends went out to dinner at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.  This year Cora and I will have an early dinner at the Fairmont Hotel.  We of course understand that our children have grown up and now have their own obligations.  In this second year it’s only slightly easier to swallow than that bacalao some 40 years ago; things change and of necessity new traditions emerge.  It’s strange to think of our home, darkened on Christmas, empty of celebrants, missing the smells of pies, roast beef, gravy and biscuits.  We’ve talked about taking a Christmas trip to somewhere; the snow, the Monterrey Peninsula, or maybe even Mexico.  That would be the big leap that I’m not sure we can ever take.    

Cora is getting food ready to take to our daughter’s home; baking fish and roasting Brussels sprouts.  Sophia has been alternating between playing with the electric train under the tree, inspecting the few gifts already out and singing Christmas carols.  She’s telling us about her hospitality plans for Santa; cookies and eggnog.  She’s thinking about leaving carrots for the reindeer and scoffs at my suggestion of leaving them some of Rainy’s dog food.   Cora looks up at me with a sidelong glance at Soph and whispers, “One thing about Christmas never changes; it really is for kids.”