Ghosts

Today would have been my Grandma E-A's birthday.   I miss her as much today as I did when she died twelve years ago.  The pain has dulled, but it's still there.  Her death changed the landscape of my family.  This fall, I wrote this piece in honor of all of my grandparents and the traditions they passed down.  I was going to include it in Christmas cards, but that seemed kind of pretentious.  So, I held onto it, wanting to find the right forum.  Today, in honor of  E-A, I've decided to post it here.  

Up here on the mountain, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Much to my husband’s dismay, I have already begun all the lists – not just the naughty and nice list, but the menus, the shipping supplies, the cards, and more. Santa’s got nothing on me when it comes to holiday lists.

While it may sound like my focus is on the secular aspects of the holidays, it is all rooted deep in my heart and my memory. My Christmas fanaticism comes from wanting to recreate the holidays of my childhood. Much like a Dickens character, I am haunted by the Ghosts of Christmas Past.

The holidays were very important in my family. Christmas was spent with my mother’s big Italian extended family; New Years with my father’s boisterous Irish one. For most of the first 23 years of my life, that was the norm.

Houses were filled to the brim with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends that might as well have been family. We ate foods we only got once a year. The seafood feast on Christmas Eve and the lasagna on Christmas Day at my Great Grandmother’s were the stuff of legend. My Grandma Rita’s spiced beef on New Year’s Day was a bit of salty heaven.

And this was probably the only time of year there were no arguments about going to church. Midnight mass on Christmas Eve was magical with the candles and incense and the choir singing in Latin and Italian. On New Year’s Day we were there in the pews, bleary eyed and some a little green around the gills, but there, to give thanks for the year ahead.

Much of this ended with the deaths of my grandparents. The houses we filled now have new owners. Our families are scattered and re-arranged. The traditions are fading. My parent’s divorce meant even my immediate family would never be in the same city.

When Elwood was born, my husband and I decided that unless there were special circumstances, we would celebrate Christmas at home. We would open our doors to whoever wanted to come, but our children would wake up in their own beds and Santa would always know where to find us.

I don’t regret that decision at all and I don’t miss the packing and driving. But I miss those wonderful times together with so many members of my family and I want my boys to have the same thing. I do everything I can recapture that feeling, but it’s not the same. Mailing a gift to my niece doesn’t give me the same joy as watching her find it under the tree. The boys matching pajamas are adorable on Christmas morning, but the pictures e-mailed to extended family don’t do them justice. I’ve mastered Grandma Testa’s lasagna, but it will never taste the same to me.

Last year, we hosted Christmas Eve. The people were different. The house was different. The food was different. But there was something comforting and familiar about it. I said a little prayer of thanks as I watched Elwood & Finn with their cousins.

I also began to let go of the idea that I had to recreate the holidays of my childhood. I’ll tell my boys the stories and I’ll show them the pictures. They’ll learn the traditions I learned and we’ll make the special meals. But together, our family will create our own traditions that feel just as right. Hopefully, my boys will want to recreate them when they have families of their own.