A Christmas story
Food, family and a holiday plague
Hi! It’s been too long. The holidays hit me hard this year.
As I wrote in a previous post, I grew up in Las Vegas in a very holiday-oriented family, especially Christmas and Easter. We were/some of us still are a Catholic family, Mexican on one side, Italian on the other. My parents hosted parties every year, inviting sometimes 30-40 people. Our house was full of flowers, poinsettias, and overflowing tables of catered food; the champagne flowed. I was reminded of this by my dad who just spent a week with us for Christmas. My mom and dad always went big and it was fun! One year mom got an idea from Martha Stewart, her go-to party inspo queen, and made a towering croquembouche, only instead of pastry drizzled with spun sugar, she made a Christmas-y version with strawberries dipped in white chocolate.
Back then my great-aunt and uncle on my mom’s side drove from Colorado every year in a hulking Buick sedan loaded down with homemade treats they had been preparing for months (they had no children). Relatives on my dad’s side, my aunt and her two daughters, my cousins whom I adored, lived in Las Vegas and they were always a part of our holidays, as was my grandmother who moved with us to Vegas from Colorado in the early 70s. My mom’s brother and his wife also lived in town. This is all to say we had a pretty big family—and big celebrations—back then.
As an aside, but maybe a long one, and something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, almost all of the traditional foods we grew up eating, whether on my Italian or Mexican side, were basically sweets or carb-loaded, but so so good. I have many delectable memories of these foods and some of them I make myself now using our family recipes. Back then, all the many Italian cookies, cakes, breads and candy were made by my mom or my Colorado aunt and uncle. Some kind of pasta was traditional on Christmas Eve like ravioli, ricotta-stuffed manicotti or spaghetti and meatballs. Catholics don’t eat meat on Christmas Eve. And always some kind of —or two or three—decadent desserts.
On my dad’s side of course, the refried beans, tortillas, meats, chorizo, cheese—the usual delicious Mexican fare, only homemade, much of it with lard—was our non-holiday family food. We also owned a Mexican restaurant, two of them, and they were very successful. We ate there all the time and so did the rest of Las Vegas. My grandmother cooked in the kitchen and taught the other cooks her recipes until she was in her seventies. My mom cooked more well-balanced, healthier meals at home, but we ate at the restaurant at least once a week.
I was overweight for most of my childhood. And yet, growing up in the 1980s in Vegas—and within my own family—there was a LOT of pressure to be thin.
I have spent many years unpacking all of this —and my terrible body issues—in therapy. More on that later, maybe. I am sure many of you can relate.
Our Christmases are much smaller now that I live in Nashville and my husband’s parents are gone. We typically see my brother-in-law and his wife and our nephew for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have one child, we have one and there aren’t a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles living nearby. I usually invite a friend or two to round out the table—I don’t like anyone spending the holiday alone unless they really, really want to—but I sometimes yearn for those big family gatherings.
This year our table was maybe the smallest it’s ever been except for the 2020 pandemic year. It was just the three of us and my dad, “Papa”. And Papa almost didn’t come. His sister, my aunt who is 93, had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks and wasn’t doing well. He didn’t want to leave if things didn’t improve for her. But she’s a fighter and a damn strong woman and she encouraged my dad to make the trip to Nashville. Thankfully, she made it home from the hospital by Christmas Eve, surrounded by lots of family and a home health aide to help.
Even though it was just us, we still did all the things we usually do at Christmas and Hanukkah (we celebrate both)—or most of them: June and I baked (only) two kinds of cookies; spaghetti and meatballs for Christmas Eve; waffles for breakie on Christmas morning and a porchetta-style pork roast for Christmas dinner. We even made latkes one night after Dad left. (See above, FOOD = important)—because we ALL had a cold. Also, what else are you going to do when stuck inside over the holidays but cook?
It’s a terrible, nasty virus that I don’t wish upon anyone. Not flu and not Covid (we took multiple tests), just some rando bug going around. I was SO worried about my dad catching it (he’s 87 and has heart and lung issues) that had I known I was getting sick I would have told him not to come. But I only started feeling weird when he was in the air. He did, in fact, get it. How could he not? All of us sharing a not-that-big house, eating, drinking, watching too much football and old movies together for a week. But he fared better than all of us! He only really felt bad for a couple of days. June and Daniel and I are still sick and for me it’s day ten. Go figure, he’s strong just like his sister battling her illness with fortitude and positivity. Must be those strong Mexican genes, plus they’ve been through it ALL—wars, the Great Depression, health problems and so much more. I was more worried about them than I am myself, so much so that I worked myself into an almost-manic (in the strict sense of the word) tizzy, for which I had to take extra meds, meds I don’t want to take. But that’s a post for another time.
In the end, although we are now talking about the “plague-on-our-house-Christmas”—worse than the Covid year because although it was just us, none of us were sick that year—it did have its sweet moments. Like June’s very moderated and quiet squeals (she’s like her dad obvs) when she opened her surprise gift of an electric guitar, all the great conversations we had with my dad about “the old days,” and after Dad left, the chats with June around the table, the candles of the menorah burning, about religion and Jesus, the Jewish holidays and the Bible. Talk of the many plagues in Exodus was fun. Dad would have been much better at answering her questions about Christianity but Daniel and I did our best.
I set out to write a totally different missive about our “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad” Christmas but upon further reflection, it wasn’t that bad. We were together, small but mighty, and although there were some challenges, it was still beautiful. This time of year is magical and filled with light and that can’t be quashed by a stupid cold. I learned some lessons in there too, mostly about my worry and anxiety around the holidays and my stubborn tendencies to think more about others than myself.
But now is my time. I love winter, and while I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, I do have a few ideas on how to make 2025 better than this weird, difficult, and tumultuous one we’re leaving behind.
Happy New Year, everyone! And thanks for reading. I hope you get your drink on, or your pajamas, or however you choose to celebrate this year. Love and light to all.