We were strangers in a strange land that first Christmas on Yale Avenue.
Fresh from Newark by way of a post-World War II respite in Laurence Harbor, we had come ashore to find we were Catholics in a sea of Methodists. At first, they didn’t know what to make of us and we didn’t know what to make of them.
As adolescents will though, my brother Pete and I soon began to communicate with the kids on the street, and background was quick to come up. From them we learned that many were part of a large community of self-identified “clamdiggers” – fisherfolk, boat builders and business people of British and Northern European ancestry who had been there for generations.
We also learned that most of the kids went to Sunday School at the Methodist Church and many belonged to DeMolay and Rainbow Girls – youth organizations of the Masons which we were expressly forbidden to attend by the nuns who oversaw our religious training.
With our original city orientation and our mixed variety of Euro-genes – Italian, Irish, English and Central European – we sometimes felt like outsiders in our neighborhood. This was relieved by Catechism classes in St. Peter, our new home parish and preparation for Confirmation.
Since a hallmark of our childhood had been the open doors of the Bayshore and Newark, we wondered how the differences in our backgrounds would translate here. Would invitations to hang out, stay for lunch or dinner or snacks, be forthcoming? Would our invitations to the kids in the neighborhood be accepted?
What would the food be like? Would they like our food which was often peppered with spices – Italian and Hungarian?
Our brother Mark was only four and too little to be concerned, but Pete and I got our first inkling when we were invited by a family down the street for dinner.
It turned out to be roast chicken, potatoes and a whole lot of jello with whipped cream. Perfectly plain and unlike at our house, nothing spicy at all. My father was known to spike almost everything with crushed red pepper when mom’s back was turned, so the fare seemed kind of bland, but quite palatable.
The moms in the neighborhood were curious about what would turn up on our table and, I’m convinced, invited themselves to coffee one Wednesday afternoon to find out. A popular commercial of the day touted the Prince brand of Italian foods with “Anthony” running home every Wednesday for Spaghetti.
The house failed the garlic sniff test that day, though. As the neighborhood learned, Sunday was spaghetti day in our house.
Culinary curiosity about us really started building in the fall with Thanksgiving. The neighbors were interested to learn that our table had a hefty mix of American and Italian favorites. What would Thanksgiving be without Grandma Mae’s Brasciole and her homemade ravioli, after all?
As Christmas approached, we learned that by mutual agreement, trimming the trees did not take place until Christmas Eve on our street. That was fine with us because ours had always gone up on Christmas Eve, too. It was also a tradition on the street for parents and kids to gather at one of the houses late at night for a celebration after the trees were trimmed.
In what would become an ongoing tradition at our house, Dad and Mom decided it would be a perfect icebreaker to invite everyone in to share our Christmas Eve.
Our tradition was not the Feast of the Seven Fishes so popular today, however. It was Grandma Mae’s Escarole Soup and Italian bread for a light dinner. Then hours of concentration on the tree, setting out the manger Dad had made and straightening up the house. This was followed by the perfectly wonderful, literal “pig out” open house after Midnight Mass
.As per Dad’s tradition, it featured heaping platters of antipasto with assorted Italian cold cuts, Italian cheeses, mixed olives, pickled mushrooms, roast peppers and the like. All of it was consumed with gusto by our mainstream neighbors, who reached our house after touring each other’s Christmas trees.
It turned out to be just the first of many such festive Christmas Eve finales on the block.
I have since come to call this meal, “The Feast of the Seven Salamis” and look forward to a variation of it every year in my own home. I did go through a traditional Catholic period of doubt about its origins though, as most Italian-Americans of my acquaintance cling to the fishes on Christmas Eve.
The doubt was relieved this year by a terrific tutorial from Msgr. Sam A. Sirianni, rector of my home parish, the Co-Cathedral of St. Robert Bellarmine in Freehold. At the annual Christmas Carol Festival Dec. 6, he expounded on Italian Christmas customs.
The Feast of the Seven Fishes, he explained to an audience of over 300, is not, strictly speaking, an Italian tradition. Instead, it’s Italian-American.
“Catholics recognize Christmas Eve as a festal night,” he said. “In fact, all (Christian) immigrant communities make it a special time. It is a time when all the family can gather and celebrate the collective memory of foods that remind them of home.”
In Italy, and in many Italian-American homes, he said, there are two night time meals. The one before Midnight Mass is meatless in remembrance of abstinence requirements which applied before the Second Vatican Council. Meat can definitely be served at the second meal in the wee hours of the morning after Midnight Mass, he said.
“Whatever food that is available that is meatless can be served,” for the early meal, he said.
“Today, in America, with the Seven Fishes, it is more of a gourmet experience,” Msgr. Sirianni said. But in the old times, when there was more poverty in Southern Italy, especially, “you served whatever you had. My favorite example is polenta which now is considered a gourmet food by some,” he said.
“It’s mush. It’s what you served when you had nothing else to eat,” he said. For the poor, the Feast of the Seven Fishes was apt to focus on pasta with “sardines, with beans, with eel. Most people won’t look at an eel today. But back then, they used stuff no Americans would want but their use of herbs and spices made them delicious dishes,” he said.
These dishes, he said, “drew the family together at a time when society was prejudiced and suspicious of immigrants. They could be together in the home and celebrate,” said Msgr. Sirianni.
I like to think the Feast of the Seven Salamis could have been the meal St. Francis had in mind when he admonished a friar for wanting to abstain
from meat on the feast day, saying that on Christmas, he would “smear the walls with meat.”
RECIPES
Grandma Mae’s Escarole Soup
Ingredients:
– 2 tblsp. Extra virgin olive oil
– 2 cloves garlic, crushed
– 2 small carrots, diced
– 1 sweet onion, diced
– 1 pound loose, sweet Italian sausage (optional), broken up into small pieces
– 1 small bulb fennel, chopped
– 3 plum tomatoes, chopped, with the seeds removed
– 2 celery stalks, diced
– 12 cups water
– 1 tblsp Better than Chicken bullion dissolved in a small amount of warm water
– 1 head escarole, washed and cut into strips
– 3 large eggs
– grated Pecorino Romano Cheese to taste
DIRECTIONS:
Heat the garlic in oil in a large stock pot over a medium flame. Add the fennel, carrots, celery and onions and cook for 5 minutes. Break the sausage apart and cook it, stirring with a wooden spoon until browned. Add the tomatoes and cook lightly. Add the water and the Better than Bullion mix and bring to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the Escarole and cook until tender, tasting for seasoning and salt as desired. Lower the flame to simmer. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs together in a bowl. Stream the mixture gently into the broth while stirring with the wooden spoon. Serve with grated cheese.
ASSEMBLING A TRADITIONAL ANTIPASTO PLATTER:
First choose a selection of cured meats. A general rule of thumb is 2-3 ounces of cold cuts per person. . I like to include Genoa and hard salami, sopressata and prosciutto, which I sometimes wrap around slices of melon. Some rare roast beef thinly sliced and pepperoni, more generously sliced, are favorites. A range of Italian cheeses cut into small chunks might include provolone, parmigiano-reggiano, and mozzarella cheese. Irish and English Cheddar, Blue Cheese and Stilton are zesty accompaniments as well.
Choose a variety of vegetables such as jarred artichokes, pickled mushrooms, sun-dried, cherry or grape tomatoes, roasted red bell or cherry peppers, chickpeas, or cipollini onions. At least two cups of mixed olives and stuffed grape leaves.
Assemble on a large platter, marble slab or generous cutting board, rolling the cold cuts for a nice presentation and arranging the ingredients in groups around a bowl with the olives in the center. Set out party style tooth picks to make selection easier.
Lois Rogers has been writing about faith, family and food since the late ‘90s, most notably in her award winning blog, “Keeping the Feast,” which appeared in The Monitor. “A Place at the Table” is her new blog currently under construction. Lois is available as a guest speaker for parishes and local organizations and speaks on a variety of topics. Contact her at [email protected].
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