It’s a warm, sunny day in Hollywood — -weather that still seems odd in December for this Jersey girl, and adds to an already unsettled feeling, amidst EVERYTHING ELSE. I close the curtains and curl up on the couch to gaze at the coffee table filled with a collection of Christmas stuff I’ve hauled in from the garage.
I haven’t decorated our bungalow for holiday times in who knows how many years. Like many transplants to California, winter holidays for my husband and me have become about flying back East to celebrate with family. Sure, I’d put a few things up to get in the spirit, and now, looking at the total haul of 30 years of marriage and earlier California Christmases, I realize I have a collection of angels. Yikes…Have I become one of those “Angel Ladies”?
Lots are from Via Gregorio Armeno in Naples, Italy, a beloved spot I’ve been visiting regularly every year, (except this one!), to wander through artisan shops where nativity scene figures are made. And there’s a 1960s Pop Art style angel that topped my childhood family tree, from Mommy’s hipster phase, when she also bought a smiley face trash can and toilet seat decorated with pink polka-dotted daisies.
I reach out to a pair of china angel bells. Their sweet ring takes me back to long-ago Christmas Eves at Nana and Papa’s house in Newark. Memories rush in of the four of us kids tumbling out of the Country Squire station wagon to race ahead of Daddy and Mommy, up porch stairs to ring the bell of the big old house. A heavy door opens to a blast of radiator heat, my sisters and I shake off our rabbit fur muffs, and get mercilessly cheek-pinched by zias — Clementina, Elvira, Amalia…
The great smell of fish frying in olive oil filled the house. No one back then called this The Feast of the Seven Fishes, a southern Italian tradition that’s all the rage now with foodies. For us, Christmas Eve simply meant the longest and greatest meal of the year, sitting for delicious hours in the candlelit dining room, as Nana, Mommy, and the zias circled with platters of fragrant roasted peppers, steaming pasta, so much fish, and Papa’s rum cake. There were “Salute!” toasts, grown-ups urging us to take seconds (“poco di piu, poco di piu”), a funny uncle who’d call out “Baccala, baccala, vieni qua, vieni qua!”.
It’s been over 40 years since that dining room table. Today half the family that sat there are in Paradiso. The rest — aunts and uncle, brother and sisters — are far away from me, all in our little circles, facing quiet Christmas Eves. We talk on the phone of vaccines, UPS deliveries, and fish.
Those Christmas Eves of longest ago are what binds us, what became our compass for all that followed, as we moved on to create new traditions with friends and family over so many decades. And now, in this strangest time, we hold those memories more dear.
As I set out the angels around the bungalow, I imagine la famiglia all over the map, making baccala, insalata di pesce, linguine alla vongole. I bring the angel bells to the kitchen where I’ll fry the fish, set the table with a lace cloth, and light the candles, in gratitude for past and present.
And surrounded by deliciousness and loving spirits, my husband and I will raise our glasses for the simple toast of my childhood. I’ll say it stronger this year, we’ll chant that toast, to celebrate the full meaning of a call for harmony, wholeness, and good health. All together, with the Christmas angels smiling down upon us: Salute! Salute! Salute!
