A Christmas Memory

When I was a child my parents, brother and I, as well as many other relatives, usually had Christmas dinner at the home of my Uncle Dave Buccambuso and my Aunt Pauline. It was a pretty big two-story house, not actually part of the Goat Hill neighborhood but very near to it. Many of the Pueblo Sicilians who grew up on Goat Hill also lived there, or nearby, when they became adults.

Sometime during the morning the men would leave while the women were cooking dinner, and would return before dinner was to be served. One year, I was probably about fourteen, it was determined that I was old enough to accompany the men. We went to the homes of other relatives who lived nearby and were welcomed with hugs and lots of people talking at the same time. The houses were all very warm from the ovens as well as the furnaces, and of course there were wonderful cooking smells in all of them. We probably went to about four houses, and at each one we were offered Italian pastries and the whiskey bottle came out and shots were poured and the men held up their glasses and said, “Salute,” which is the Italian word for “health”, before downing the shots. At a couple of the houses I was given half-shots and I tried to pour them down like the men did but the fiery stuff burned my throat and made my eyes water. It wasn’t until a long time later that I realized that my relatives were not just celebrating Christmas, but also their prosperity, although they weren’t prosperous. But coming from where they and their parents had been, from great hardship and destitution, from steel mill and smelter work that paid little for much labor, they were prosperous. The Great Depression and World War II were over, they had jobs or, as some of them did, income from operating gambling establishments, and they had houses. They had survived, and that is the right word, the poverty of their childhoods, and they were almost middle-class, although I’m not sure that term had been invented. They were doing fine, and they were enjoying life, and they were taking pleasure in each other’s company. Everyone shouted Merry Christmas when we left each house and headed for another, and finally after the last one back to where we started. When we returned the women began to serve the dinner, a big turkey, ham, gravy, and fried cardoon. Later there would be pizzelles, potica, and powdered sugar and frosted Italian cookies.

That was a long time ago and, as far as I know, the Christmas visit tradition died a long time ago. That’s too bad, but still, in my family, on Christmas day, when our family gathers for dinner, the whiskey bottle still comes out, shots are poured and a toast is given, and even some of the women partake, which never would have happened in the Christmases of my memory.

Salute!

Merry Christmas

Jerry Miller