Christmas Memories

If you haven’t grown up in a religious family, you still celebrate Christmas. Although you may also celebrate Hannukah and Kwanzaa. To me Christmas is really a celebration of the family, of the joy of giving and receiving, anticipating what might delight members of the immediate and the acquired families. It is thinking of others. Whether they be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or Palestinian. Or what have you. When my sister and I were small, we knew the story of Gabriel and Mary and Joseph and would stomp around the house singing “We Three Kings of Orient are”.  and in school we participated in the reading of a psalm each morning, my favorite was the 23rd, before pledging allegiance to the flag. While the religious aspect of Christmas was missing in my home, it was however family. And we always toasted my mother’s parents in far-off Wurzburg at Christmas – only now can I imagine how homesick she must have felt then.

While it’s not yet time to bring out the tree or the manger scene, it is time to make those walnut/cheese breads. My son made/makes them every year as gifts for friends and I couldn’t fathom how come they always came out so well despite the fact that all measurements were eyeballed. The dough might have a sourdough base, sometimes it might be brewer’s yeast. Despite the fact that I said he should have let the dough rise at least twice before adding the chopped up pecorino and walnuts, the dough was soon shaped into small loaves. The heat had been on in the house and the pans were set on the radiators to rise. Sometimes two, sometimes five loaves per pan. Once they had more or less doubled in size, they would go into the oven. I had put one sheet pan in, then went to get the other one. I thought there were five loaves on this one, I said. But there are only four. Yes, there were five he confirmed. Well, where’s the fifth one? Maybe it slid off. Nope, nowhere in sight. Not under the table or the chairs. There just wasn’t a fifth loaf. Ah hah. The dog! She was a good dog and didn’t steal things from the table, but if it had slid off onto the floor? Just too tempting.  Hopefully eating a small loaf of still rising dough wouldn’t give her indigestion or bloating. A call to the vet reassured us, so she was put on diet. 

Christmas Eve dinner always means no meat – in other words fish. In Umbria, it was not the dinner of the seven fishes which I had never heard of till a couple of years ago. The stores were sure to be crowded and a long salmon fillet had been ordered. It had been picked up a couple of days before Christmas but then, oh dear, had not been put in the freezer. Katherine, a friend and also a great cook, was visiting and offered to help prepare the Christmas dinner. When the salmon was pulled out, the smell made it  obvious that it  would make a great meal for the cats, but not for human beings.  The alternative? There would be 10 for Christmas Eve dinner. Perhaps they still had some salmon at the fish counter – so a desperate drive to the market had my heart beating wildly and hoping. With trepidation I made my way up to the fish counter and lo and behold they still had salmon, big chunks of salmon, and I hoped none of the customers waiting in line would beat me to it. They didn’t, and I triumphantly took my purchase home and Katherine made a wonderful roast salmon for us humans while the cats banqueted on salmon for more than a couple of days.

Our Christmas always included Kay and Csaba, Australian expats. Their contributions would inclde Csaba’s glogg, mulled wine with raisins and almonds, and there would be Kay’s dukkah, a witness to the years they had spent in Benghazi. We would dip pieces of unsalted bread in that year’s olive oil and then in the sesami/cumin mixture of seeds. Not to mention her marvelous pates, all testifying to a friendship that went back some 20 years when they began transforming a farmer’s stable into a beautiful home on a slope overlooking the cliff of Orvieto. 

It is Christmas Eve. A small blonde 3-year old child is finally allowed out of the room upstairs where she was told to wait till Santa had left his gifts and had disappeared – where? Somewhere, who knows where. He had lost his hat on the stairs though. She opened the door and came out on the balcony to look down on the tree glowing with lights and with presents piled up all around. Speechless at first, and then an unbelieving gasp. Is that for me? at the sight of the tractor  and truck in yellow and blue. Yes, it was a present from Santa Tommy, her American uncle. Later when it came time to go to bed, she attached a piece of paper on which she had printed “Don’t touch”.  That 3-year old child is now 25.

I had gone by the shop of the ceramic artist who knows how many times. It wasn’t his usual production, but it was lovely, ever so beautiful, and seemed to speak to me. A deep blue bowl with slits along the sides, with an even deeper puddle of blue inside. I rarely bought things for myself, even things I had fallen in love with. Then came Christmas. The present from my children was wrapped in layers of paper and bubble plastic. I slowly unwrapped it as family and guests watched. There! I t was the deep blue bowl. It was then set next to my computer, and I could hear it whispering, telling me its stories.

Books, books, books. No place to put them. Add a whole batch of DVDs piled up on the windowsill and I wonder how I’ll manage to get any kind of order in the house. There’s always room for the Christmas tree though. And presents of various kinds. That one with my name on it is rather enigmatic. With instructions to go look outside on the balcony where there are packages of different sizes. Bookshelves! How marvelous. But since they are IKEA, they have to be assembled. And that’s where Santa’s helpers in the guise of my son and my granddaughter come in. There they go, trying to figure out the instructions. No, this piece goes here, and that one goes there. And they end up laughing so hard (and that is the loveliest present of all) they can hardly catch their breath. 

There are other half remembered stories – like sending my boys out to get a Christmas tree (we still livedin town) and they returned with a small dog with an injured leg. We did take him to the vet and then since we could not keep him gave him to the young woman who helped us in the house and lived in the country. I wish now we had kept the little dog. 

And Christmas would not be Christmas without the small bag of salted almonds my special friend, the godmother of my youngest whom a German uncle of mine had christened Die Rosenfrau, the Lady of the Roses, always gave us in return for my traditional Stollen.  My lady of the roses is no longer with us and I’m not sure if I should make my Stollen or not – without raisins for one son, without candied fruit for the other, but always with cardamom giving it that fragrance identified with Christmas.

Is remembering enough? Perhaps. For whatever we do now for Christmas, those past Christmases are still as alive as ever and no one can take them away, whether I make Stollen or not.