On Holiday Traditions- Cannolis, Star Wars, and of course, The Doors

            It’s been another holiday season, and another Christmas full of tradition, joy, stress, and the all-important morning of squeals and hopping from my daughters.  I tried to take it all in this year, pausing and closing my eyes, breathing in the smells and committing as much as I could to memory.  I’m sure I failed, because no matter what we try to tell ourselves in the moments of our lives, they are fleeting, and they burst forth so rapidly, we can’t help but forget some of them down the road. 

            When I was a child, Christmas was dominated by car rides.  We would pack up on Christmas Eve in the early afternoon, and head to Passaic, where my NonNon, my Pop-Pop’s mother, lived on the second floor of a three story walk up. NonNon created everything from scratch, and I have no idea what time she had to rise, pull on her stockings and set her hair, so that the food would be done in time for supper.

            When we arrived, lugging gifts and wearing way too much outerwear, the windows would be fogged up from the cooking, the kind that only happens in the tiny kitchens belonging to little old Italian women, in dented silver pots bubbling over slow, steady flames.  The dozen or so adults would cram around the dining room table, with no room to move, and the seven children (myself included) ran up and down the linoleum hallway, between the bedroom housing the tiny television with rabbit ears, and the sewing room with fruit made out of pins stuck through glass beads.  The floor had a brown and yellow diamond pattern to it, and the bathroom was classic pink and white checked, with a pink toilet, sink, and tub.  NonNon would create a traditional seven fish dinner, starting off with tuna in the antipasto (which she pronounced “anti-past”), then spaghetti and clam sauce, and circling all the way through fried calamari and muscles. We were so stuffed, movement became difficult, and more than once I found myself falling asleep in the back room, on a comforter that smelled like Dove soap. 

The Cousins' Party

            But that was just the beginning.  After NonNon’s, we piled into the car, and drove to celebrate with my Grandma Bea’s entire family.   This was dubbed the “Cousins' Party” at some point, and grew larger as more and more cousins were produced.  I was the oldest, and often tasked with babysitting the younger brood.  Depending on the year, we were either at my grandparent’s in Passaic, or at Aunt Glore and Uncle Joe’s place in Wayne, with the hidden back TV room off the kitchen (accessible through swinging saloon doors) and a basement with a bar that was perfect for hide and seek.  We would pass around grab bag gift presents, and those of us in the younger set took to copying the thick NJ accents of our elders, oohing and ahhing and adding in some random adjective to the uwrapped present (our favorite being “ohh, ahh, how FLOR-al”, coined after someone opened a sweater with tiny flowers embroidered all over it). 

            The party has evolved through the years, and is now in rotation between Mom’s place, or cousins Beth, Diane, or Janice’s. Traditions still abound, the most glaring being the passing of the scarfette.  This is a small, burgundy, blue, and green striped mini scarf that was picked up in the early 80’s by Grandma, Aunt Millie, and Aunt Glore when they visited the motherland.  Apparently, it was supposed to be some trendy fashionista item over in Europe, and they decided their daughters absolutely had to have them.  On Christmas, each proudly handed over a box, and the three recipients opened their gifts with much confusion, before doubling over in laughter. The next year, one of the scarves was re-gifted, and has made the rounds ever since.

The Scarfette

            The final stop on Christmas Eve was my grandparent’s house.  They had a big blue Victorian on Albion Street, back in Passaic, with a double door entry that was air tight and always made my ears pop. My parents usually carried their sleepy children into the house, and Nicole and I would wake up only for the sake of opening presents and performing a “show.”  We, along with our cousins Jennie and Katie, ran up the staircase, past the three naked nymphs holding a torch (the oddest lamp I’ve ever seen) to the guest room, where a large oval mirror with ornate golden frame was the perfect place to practice dance steps or play acting. After our performance, the adults conversed in the living room, on brown antique couches that were once my great-grandmother’s, and ate cannolis Grandma Bea made from scratch, while we lay on the couch in the room next to the kitchen, wrapped in a hand-knitted purple and blue throw watching Rudolph on the big fat old TV. 

            Nicole and I spent the ride home struggling to stay awake, calling out “Christmas” whenever we saw a house with lights outside on our side of the car.  Occasionally, we would shout “Big Christmas!” for a particularly large or impressive display.  Arriving home, we would drag ourselves up the stairs.  As we grew older, we hatched numerous schemes to catch Santa.  In a fit of inspiration when I was around 10-ish, we hatched a plan that involved using my canopy bed to our advantage- one person slept in the bed, while the other read on the floor to stay awake.  We strung a Dixie Cup with some water from the canopy, and when the reader got tired, she pulled the string, and tipped the water onto the sleeping sister, thus waking her up, and duties were switched.  At some point, though, we both fell asleep, and I woke with newsprint on my face. 

            In the morning, we would jump on our parents, shouting, “Ribbitt!” and pretending to be frogs.  Dad would go down to start the coffee, and mom would make us go back up for robes and slippers.  Then we would all descend the stairs, and tear into our presents. 

            At around 11, the Caldwell Brunch would commence with the arrival of my Dad’s family.  The brunch has been going on since long before I was born, and for the last 30+ years, it has been a gathering at Mom’s.  When I was younger, there were scrambled eggs, bagels with cream cheese, copious amounts of bacon, and even more copious amounts of Bloody Marys.  We sat around, my family along with Granny, cousins Dan and Mike and Aunt Cath, and the witty repartee was epic.  One year, I turned on a video camera, and caught us circling the room, the topics of discussion varying from Empire Strikes Back to Scooby Doo to bird watching.  Dad received a Han Solo mug that now sits in a place of honor on the same shelf as all the family-written books, and Granny entertained us by sporting her new birdfeeder as a hat.  Phone calls were placed to Uncle Steve at Better Farm, and to Aunt Joanna and Uncle Bob down in San Antonio.   Dad’s cousins Bill, Ax, and Toni arrived, along with Ax’s husband Tom, and Toni’s husband Dan and their kids Andy and Michael.  The house was full, the laughter was infectious, and the tree sparkled over all of us while we vied for seating on the antique furniture.

            Over the years, the dates of the holidays have shifted, as have the players.  When I was seventeen, I began spending at least part of the holidays with my then-boyfriend-now-husband’s family, who embraced me immediately.  We only missed one year together in college (as high school couples tend to break up for at least part of their college careers), and so I’ve been shuffling between a number of parties and towns for the better part of two decades.  After children, though, that hustle becomes quite a bit more difficult, so we’ve pared down the festivities so we only need to see one family per day. 

Franklin Lakes Nature Preserve

            This year, the Cousin’s Party occurred early, since cooler heads prevailed several years ago to avoid coinciding withChristmas Eve. As a result, I spend the day before Christmas exclusively with my husband’s family. We exchanged gifts at Mom-In-Law and Dad-In-Law’s condo and then I cooked a lasagna dinner and apple pie at our home for his whole family (they brought the rest of the food, proving once again that part of the reason I married him was for his relatives). In between, we enjoyed the warm weather with a hike through the Franklin Lakes Nature Preserve, around a former reservoir and next to a now-defunct golf course.  It topped 70 degrees, and when New Jersey’s weather is warmer than California’s, it’s something we won’t soon forget.   We ended the night with Grammy reading ’Twas The Night Before Christmas to the kids, as she does every year, while they nodded off to sleep.

            We woke on Christmas morning to my five-year-old sneaking down the stairs, where I promptly caught her and swept her back to her room.  After waiting an hour, we finally woke her sister, and as a group, crept downstairs to see their new dollhouse lit up next to the tree.  We then moved on to the annual pilgrimage to Mom’s for brunch.

            The weather grew warmer still, and led to discussion only the Caldwell’s could create, largely because of the weather anomaly and a one line text of “70 degrees- Strange Days?”  The text launched a half hour firestorm of typing, and later a roundtable discussion over strata, bagels, and lox on whether Jim Morrison really did wear the same pair of leather pants for two years straight, and if the Doors were the best or worst band of all time. Considering music (either Wagner, The Dead, Dylan, etc.) has often been at the helm of our holiday discussions, this wasn’t so far from the norm.

Caldwell Brunch circa 1984

            The crew has shrunken over the years- Dan and Mike moved away, Dad, Cath, Bob, Steve, Tom, and Granny passed away, and Bill spends most holiday mornings up in Massachusetts with his grandkids. But the rest of us still faithfully call Joanna (now in South Carolina), and strike up the conversation while giggling and laughing over shared memories and slightly more sophisticated food.  Star Wars was back in the conversation this year, as we did our best to avoid spoiling the newest edition for those who haven’t seen it. And we introduced Michael’s fiancé, entertaining her with stories of how Andrew, Michael, Nic and I created our own newspapers featuring bodily functions as children, which is clearly what led to all four of us publishing writing or illustrator work this year. 

            Our non-immediate family headed back to Toni’s to prep for dinner, and the rest of us exchanged gifts.  The highlight was when my sister handed me a letter, which outlined my daughters’ big present.  They had just opened two puppets- a horse’s head and pony, which immediately made me think that The Godfather had to be involved. But instead, the letter explained that she was adopting a horse for Riley and Ella, who would be residing at Better Farm early next week.  After stuttering through “you got my kids a pony?!” and the initial shock, there was much rejoicing in the idea that the Nicole “won” the gift giving of the year, since how do you compete with an actual pony?

The Writer's Circle

            By dinner, we were back to family memories, and the discussion strayed over to why my Aunt Dot never served gin at parties (apparently, it made people mean), and how my Grandpa Bob used to have to make the rounds after the holidays, bearing flowers and apologizing for his raucous behavior the night before to the hostesses. 

            I love spending time with my parents’ generation, because I hear these stories, and learn more about the people that have grown to legend status through their tales. Each story adds a few more pieces to the puzzle of those who came before, and the traditions and antics we’ve adopted into our own lives. 

            Someday, I’ll tell my own daughters about how Dad used to watch the entire Twilight Zone marathon with us on New Year’s Eve, and how Thanksgiving hasn’t felt quite complete without the smell of Aunt Cath’s cigarettes and cats, and a tv in the next room blasting Empire Strikes Back.  And the girls will eventually know the story of the scarfette, and hear about the secret ingredient in GG’s cannolis.  But for now, they’ll settle for happily chattering away while they play with their new dollhouse, and dream of the pony they’ll visit over spring break.  As a kid, that’s really all that matters- that, and the love in the room surrounding them, reminding them we’re all connected, no matter where we are.

Caldwell Christmas 1995