For a lot
of people, Christmas comes attached to a healthy dose of melancholy
intermingled with all the colorful lights, festive music, and hustle and
bustle. As a boy I could never conceive of why a solitary soul would not
welcome Christmas with open arms and a happy heart. For me, its one-two punch
of anticipation and excitement truly made Christmas “the most wonderful time of
the year.” But now with my youthful exuberance pretty much spent, and so many
key Christmas players no longer on the stage, the season is not what it once
was—and I understand completely.
Once upon
a time, Christmas Eve meant gathering with the cousins, exchanging gifts, and
enjoying a traditional Italian dinner featuring Spaghetti Aglio e Olio—garlic
and oil—and multiple fish dishes. The official tradition calls for seven, but
we never quite reached that number with fried eels, baccalà (salted cod) salad,
boiled shrimp, and calamari (squid) in tomato sauce rounding out the menu.
Honestly, I cannot say I ever relished this particular fishy mélange, but my
grandmother had a knack for making everything as good as it could possibly be—really.
Fish, in fact, were hard to come by in my grandmother’s hometown of
Castlemezzano in the rocky mountains of Southern Italy. Her village was poor
and accustomed to the humblest of fish fare, and the tradition crossed the
ocean. There were no swordfish steaks, lobster tails, or sushi on our Christmas
Eve tables. Her spaghetti was more than enough for me on this one night a year.
I would sample an eel or two, which were peculiarly edible, and a few benign
shrimp as well—but that was the long and short of my seafood intake.
The image
of my grandmother preparing Christmas Eve dinners, with a mother lode of
cooking oil at her disposal, is seared in my memory. Interestingly, though, it is
not olive oil I recall but peanut oil—in big gallon tins. It seems that during
World War II, olive oil was hard to come by and—when available—too expensive,
so my grandmother substituted with Planter’s peanut oil. It was comparatively
cheap and, as it turned out, tasty enough to pass muster. She purchased it at
the Arthur Avenue retail market in the Bronx’s "Little Italy." Times
have changed. Peanut oil is now hard to come by and expensive when you do find
it.
The
Christmas Eve tradition endures—I think we have even reached the magic number
of seven fish—but the memories do, too, of truly thrilling times from the past
and the people who made them so. There is definitely a downside to having
exceptionally fond memories of what once was and is no more.
(Photo
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
