Every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the family would spend together. Most of the time it was at our house. This was the second house we had lived in. We moved there when I was four years old. My brother Tony was born in that house a year later.
This house was a big two-story brick house. It had a large finished basement with a fireplace. The basement had a kitchen, boiler room, finished bathroom, three large closets and the main room was gigantic. The upstairs main floor had a huge kitchen with a breakfast alcove, dining room, and a large living room with a fireplace and adjacent library with huge windows. The upstairs second floor had three bedrooms with a kitchen and another full bathroom. This is where my grandmother lived, (my father’s mother). There also was an unfinished attic. The outside property next to the house was 100’ by 100’. It was huge. People in the neighborhood thought we were rich. We weren’t, but my father made a good living and owned a men’s clothing factory. His factory was big and everyone from both sides of the family at one time or another worked in the factory. My father had contracts with the US Army to make uniforms. We were comfortable.
Soon after we moved to the new house my father’s mother died and a few years later my father almost died from a major heart attack. He lost his business, but we survived.
My mother went back to work and I was given a lot of responsibility in helping out.
Even though we were poor, we didn’t act or behave that way. My mother cooked every night. She made our clothes for us and we lived a life absence of feeling sorry for our selves. My father eventually got better and returned to work and we were OK. Not as good as before, but OK.
My parents converted this large house into a two family house so we would have an extra income. It was after the house was converted that family Christmases were spent at our house.
Two weeks before Christmas, we would put up the tree and hang lights outside around the house and the back. All the lights were blue. It was very pretty to look at and was a perfect setting for Christmas.
In the Italian tradition, Christmas Eve was fish night and Christmas Day was the meat day. All my Aunts would come over and along with my mother and grandmother and would do the cooking. It took all day to prepare the lavish meal for all of us. The fish was bought early in the morning at the fish market as well vegetables at the local farmer’s market and all the deserts and bread at the Italian bakery.
We used the finished basement area to have dinner.
My father would rent long tables and set them up in a semi-circle like a horseshoe. The cousins would set the table and we would sit down to have dinner around 8pm. When I say all of us, I mean about
40 -50 people which included all the new babies too.
The fish dinners always consisted of the 1st course being spaghetti with a red fish sauce made with shrimp or calamari. If you preferred a white sauce there was spaghetti and claims and the claims were fresh and had to me washed and opened.
The next course would be a salad. Some would prefer to wait and have their salad with the main meal. The main meal would consist of all kinds of fish dishes. Lobster with butter sauce, lobster tails baked with red sauce and mozzarella cheese. There was fried flounder and two kinds of shrimp and a fish salad with calamari, shrimp, lettuce and other types of fish. Along with the main course came all the side dishes of two or three kinds of vegetables and of course fresh Italian bread and butter.
After the main course the table was cleared and fruit and nuts were served. In some families that would be considered desert, but in Italian families, desert is cake or pastry. The deserts consisted of all kinds of Italian pastries and assorted cakes and cookies and served with either regular coffee, which was called brown coffee or espresso with lemon slices (black coffee).
Later that night we would open presents.
When I was 12-14 years old, I would do my impression of Elvis Presley singing Hound Dog The family loved it and so did I. ( I can hear all my musician friends laughing). Needless to say, by the time I was 15 years old I refused to do it anymore because I had gotten seriously into jazz and no self respecting jazz musician would impersonate Elvis.
When midnight came, we were all exhausted and would sleep all over the house. The bedrooms, and the couches the floor, everywhere. The next morning we would all wake up, to the smell of fresh coffee. We would have breakfast in shifts.
The men would sit and sip on their extra cups of coffee, smoke and hang around the house and talk or watch TV while the kids either played together or played with some of the toys that Santa brought them. The women would begin preparations for the late afternoon dinner. You must remember this was 1949- 1959. That’s the way it was then. Women did everything and the women were all my mother’s sisters. Whenever they were together they were always laughing as if they had some private joke that no one but them were privy to.
The dinner, again, would consist of a huge meal, with many courses. The first course was some kind of Italian soup. The second course anti-pasta, meaning before the pasta. Next was macaroni (pasta) in a meat sauce or huge meat lasagna. Then came the meat from the sauce that you would eat with Italian bread. Next came some kind a roast along with chicken, which was either roasted, or cacciatore with plenty of side dishes like broccoli in a white garlic sauce, peas and carrots, artichokes cooked in garlic and oil and corn. Again the fruits and nuts and the coffee and desert were served. All in all, we had a seven course meal. After dinner the kids would play, the women washed the dishes and then the adults would either sit around and talk or play cards.
The thing to remember is that these dinners took hours to prepare and hours to consume, but it was a joyous time for everyone. I think back at those times when I was younger and how I enjoyed it all so much. The following week we would do it all over again at one of my aunt’s house for New Years Eve and New Years.
It’s sad, but true, the world was an easier and simpler place to live in back then. It took very little to make us happy.
As the years went by, all the cousins had there own kids and the sisters and brothers had there own Christmas Eve dinners together and after my grandmother passed away, it seemed the family didn’t get together as much. We only saw each other at Weddings and funerals and by the time I was 19, I was traveling and working all the time including Christmas and New Years. If the dinners had continued, I would have missed most of them as I missed many of my cousin’s weddings.
I am so grateful for those memories and my family. To this day I am close with my family. four years ago my Aunt Virginia passed away. I was very close to her and although I hadn't seen her at Christmas in many years, I spoke to her all the time. With her passing and my Aunt Florence, the De Rosa clan (my mother's side of the family) are gone.. My cousin Phil died this pass year and I am eternally grateful to him for he was there for me when my Father died.
My wife, Carol, loves Christmas and decorates our apartment while listening to Christmas music and between my brother’s family my kids and grandchildren and our friends another tradition has begun. With the miracle of the Internet and now Facebook I am in close contact with my cousins. My cousin Angel renewed the traditional family picnic which had stopped 55 years ago, but that’s another story.
I think for all of us, Christmas will be remembered with joy and tragedy. For the last 10/20 years, all the racial tension and the killing of our black brethren. Now going on three years, Covid 19 and the pandemic that has cost thousands of lives throughout the world.. Let us send healing prayers to those who lost their loved ones and give thanks for what we have and pray for healing and peace.
My wife, Carol and I and I wish you all a happy and healthy holiday and may your memories and future memories be filled with joy
Dom Minasi
jazzguitar@domminasi.com
