Do You Have A Magic Holiday Memory?

momma-three
Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:22:33 +0000

I have such wonderful Christmas memories. Every Christmas Eve we would all cook for our Feast of the Seven Fish. This is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Italian homes. The house smelled so good from the giant 8 foot extra wide tree that we hunted for every year at some far off tree farm on what seemed like the coldest Saturday of the year. My mother would pack eggplant Parmesian and fresh Italian rolls she bought at the bakery at 5:00 AM in the morning. We would all be in the center of the tree farm and my mother would open the trunk of the car and within seconds we would be eating warm eggplant Parm on these delishish rolls. Thermos of hot coffee and hot chocolate seemed to magically appear as did the food. My mom loved our traditions and seemed to bring magic to every holiday. I still don’t know how she kept everything hot for that long drive.
After eating our huge fish dinner Santa would arrive and he would bring us his gifts. Santa was one of our wonderful Jewish neighbors who thoroughly enjoyed the festivities. We all sat on his lap and the super 8 camera (video in later years) would film us from the time Santa “arrived on the roof” to the time he parked his reindeer. The coffee and hot cocoa was flowing and extended family all joined us for desert before we headed out for midnight mass. We all walked to church just to burn off the calories. We would get home after 1:00 and immediately my siblings and I would stack all the presents into their respective piles. My parents must have shopped for weeks because Christmas was pure extravagance. Mom would stuff our stockings with the silliest things…funny long underwear to keep us warm…silly socks…the warmest wool hats…they were all picked carefully and always inspired the same reaction of “oh mom!!” After unwrapping all of the presents it was the middle of the night and we would all sit down to breakfast. The bacon smelled so good as did the saugages, eggs, and french toast. I don’t think we ever went to bed before 4:30 in the morning. I miss those memories and every year I relive them in my heart, and I could still hear the beautiful laughter of my mother.

My mother and father would be up long before us and would have the dinner in the oven ready for our early Christmas day dinner. Christmas was such a great day filled with all the wonderful people that my mother welcomed into our home and her heart. People gravitated to our home because as tired as my mother must have been she always had the most beautiful smile and hearty laugh. Christmas was our day we spent playing with our toys and visiting with all of the people who came to visit. It was a huge open house where everyone was welcomed. I am still in awe of my mother because I have never met a woman who had such total joy and love in her heart. I am grateful that my mom was part of our first three kids Christmas’ but sadly she passed away before my daughter was born. I am so grateful to have had such great childhood memories. They were trully magical…