A Brooklyn Christmas

This past August my grandfather (93 years old) passed away. As the holiday season approaches I have found myself flashing back to memories of him as well as my family during Christmas time. Of the memories I do possess the Christmas ones tend to be the most prevalent. As a child living in Brooklyn on Sheapshead Bay in the 80's it was difficult for my brothers and I to venture outside. The crime rate at this time was high and my mother was always worried that something might happen. She had lived in Brooklyn in one part or another for most of her life and had experienced her share of muggings and the like. As a result when we would venture to my grandparents' house in Coney Island I would find myself excited to be going. This was true more so around Christmas time.

My father's side of my family lived (and still lives) in California so we almost always spent Christmas with my grandparents. They would have a large party for our large family. My mother would always require us to dress nicely and we would venture over to my grandparents. The house was always well decorated with bright lights and tinsel. As we are an Italian family there would always be a twist from Italy incorporated into the festivities. My grandmother would love to cook and my mother would always help her with the cooking while asking us, her children, to lend a hand as well. The food was some of your traditional foods as well as Italian ones. My grandparents, mother, aunts, and uncles all had emigrated here from Italy and so the culture was very prevalent in the house especially around the holidays. My brothers and I would play with our many cousins and our aunts and uncles who hadn't seen us in a long time would always inquire as how we were doing. I being the shyer of the entire bunch would sometimes find myself hiding behind my mother's legs. The house would be filled with people. A situation that for most might be overwhelming but for my family it was very meaningful.

This was the holiday that we would all gather together. The only other time you would see a large gathering like this would be later at weddings, 90^th birthdays, and unfortunately my grandparent's funerals. It meant a great deal to my grandfather to have the family come together and I could still remember how happy he would be on those Christmases when we did just that. For us it seemed that Christmas was less about a religious occasion and more about a family coming together. Life has a tendency to get in the way of life and it seemed that we would all set aside our divergent and different lives to spend this one day together. It was also one of the few occasions us children were allowed to stay up past our bed time. As we would mingle and play we would eat large amounts of food and the parents would drink and in the cliché way, be merry.

As the night would progress we would have our dinner (I always being the picky eater as a child would have pasta with butter) and continue our enjoyment of being together. After dinner was the children's second favorite part of the night. The desserts! My grandparents knew the owner of an Italian bakery around the corner and would order all types of pastries and cookies. If my mother hadn't stopped us from over doing it we would have become too sick for what would come next. At about midnight the children, tired and satisfied, would hear bells ringing. If it wasn't too cold they would come from the outside or they would come from the top of the stairs of my grandparents' house. We would run to the sound and low and behold, SANTA! Years later we slowly learned that it was one of our uncles who would do this and even as we got older each of us would play this role too. We would be so thrilled and happy yelling "Santa! Santa! What did you bring me?!" And he would come down and sit in the living room and hand out gifts. Parents would take pictures and almost always someone would have a video camera out. After the gifts would be handed out and the pictures taken, Santa would leave the house with a "Ho ho ho". And then maybe an hour later the clean-up would happen and we would all part ways, saying goodbye to our aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. We would head on home usually falling asleep in the car. Thus our Christmas had ended for us to look forward to the next one.

After a few years, after my grandmother's death this tradition stopped. We would usually try to spend our holidays with my grandfather but our family never came together like that again. Eventually my brothers got married and had children, my cousins all did as well. My sister and I found ourselves focused on our careers. Now with my grandfather's passing everyone has all but gone their separate ways. This coming Christmas looks to be low key as can be expected. But I will forever cherish those memories as a child going to my grandparents for Christmas. Those were the times the true meaning of Christmas came true. That meaning, to us, family.