New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Christmas an Italian feast for the senses
Lights, sweets and the sweet baby Jesus
The Christmas season in Wooster Square used to begin with the decorations that were placed in downtown New Haven. You see, we were all just a few blocks away from the splendor that was created in the store windows, the lighted arches across Chapel Street with a small tree on either side, Santa and the reindeer sailing through the air on the corner of Church and Chapel and, of course the tree in the center of the Green. These were the signals that the holiday season was approaching.
Within our neighborhood, the holiday signs were much more subtle. In our store, for instance, the specialty items would begin to appear: Perugina chocolates, Italian dried figs packed in a large wicker basket, dried cod — baccala or stoccafisso — nuts, especially the filberts that were always toasted before being placed on the table after dinner, chestnuts in sacks and jars of honey to be drizzled on the holiday struffoli or zeppole.
You see, for most of us, the holiday was centered on the celebration of Christmas as an ancient ritual of food and religious customs.
We didn’t light our windows as they do now, or place beautifully decorated wreaths at the door. We just began to feel the holiday spirit
in the anticipation that was growing in our hearts.
Everyone still had to go to work every day and tend to all the daily chores that were part of their difficult lives. So somehow Christmas had to be squeezed into that routine, not with the luxury of weeks of preparation but within the few days leading up to Dec. 25.
As the days came closer to the holiday itself, the shoppers began to purchase the specialty foods that were to appear on the table on Christmas Eve and Day. We concentrated on the fresh foods that were traditional: broccoli for Christmas Eve, served with a lemon/oil dressing, endive or escarole that would be stuffed with anchovies, garlic and breadcrumbs, mushrooms for stuffing and, of course, the fancy fruit from California, a special treat for the end of the meal. Tangerines, oranges, shiny large red Delicious apples bathed in wax, persimmons waiting to ripen, Comice pears, fragile and sweet, the bunches of grapes
packed in sawdust from South America and golden casaba melons with their rough exteriors.
I do remember that my father always decorated our large store window with laurel roping that he purchased from a small store in the Hill section, where it was made by hand. That special feature gave the store a festive look and made the neighborhood seem special. When I was young, I remember, he sold Christmas trees. They came in a bundle and weren’t all that full, but the neighbors would stop by to select the best of the lot and carry it home to be decorated with those large, colored lights that we now use outdoors. Every family had a presepio or Nativity scene that was either placed under the tree or occupied a special place on a tabletop.
Mr. Lucibello would also begin the holiday preparations at the pastry shop a few doors away from us on Chapel Street. All of the tables usually reserved for after
noon coffee customers would be placed against the wall with a two-tier arrangement. On the gaily covered surfaces would be all the special goods that were available for the holiday.
Small chocolate spice cookies called surigile, or mouse, mostaccioli, chocolate-covered diamondshaped fig-filled cookies, chewy honey S-shaped cookies called susameile and of course torrone, a softish nougat candy studded with almonds. Many of us will remember the torrone that came in little boxes, which were all differently flavored.
For the Christmas dessert, a cream pie was usually the centerpiece. A larger version of the familiar pastichotti, the cream-filled pastries that we enjoy all year-round. In some homes, panettone, a yeasty bread with dried fruit, also was enjoyed. These were the days before home baking came into prominence. My mother always made struffoli, small balls of fried dough covered in honey.
Of course, the church served as the central focus of all the holiday traditions. Many of the most beloved customs are connected to the church’s Christmas observances. The ancient rule of abstaining from meat on the eve of a major holiday led to the traditional meatless meal on Christmas Eve. Even though the lack of meat was supposed to be a sign of penance, the Neapolitans were able to devise the most delicious seafood supper that carries on to this day as the Feast of the Seven Fishes.
Our kitchen would be
filled with the activities of my mother, sisters and my aunt Vincenza making the final preparations: frying the fish, dressing the broccoli and the baccala salad and pouring the marinade over the fried eel, which was the true mark of that special meal. For me, that meal, eaten with my family and paying homage to all the generations that came before me, is and always will be the highlight of my memories of happy times growing up Italian.
After dinner, we all stayed up playing tombola or bingo, waiting to go to midnight Mass at St. Michael Church, where the figure of baby Jesus would be placed into the empty manger, and the Italian carol “Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle” (“You Come Down from the Stars”) was sung, That was the reality of Christmas for us, the baby is born.
In our family, the evening didn’t end there. We all gathered at my parents’ house to exchange presents and enjoy the sweets. Christmas Day was almost anticlimactic, with visiting relatives who always greeted us with a tray of cookies on the kitchen table and an array of sweet cordials to usher in the holiday, and later enjoying a traditional holiday meal of lasagna and roasted capon.
The things that I remember about the Wooster Square Christmas holidays of my youth and young adulthood are really the things that made me feel connected to my heritage as an Italian American: The church, the traditions and, of course, the family gathered around the table.