Celebrating Christmas With Communion Of Saints

LORRAINE V. MURRAY, Special Contributor

Published: December 23, 2004

Christmas always seems bittersweet to me. Oh, I love the whole celebration of the baby born in a simple cave in Bethlehem, and the animals gathering around to get a peek.

I love the feasting that expresses our excitement over God coming to earth to walk among human beings and sample our sorrows and our joys.

I delight in tables laden with roasts, fresh breads, cakes, cookies and eggnog. It is wonderful to realize how many songs have been written to express folks’ awe over God’s enormous gift to mankind.

But then there are the memories of Christmases past, which never cease to tug at my heart. Because, you see, although my parents have been gone nearly 30 years, they still play a big part in my Christmas longings.

I can just close my eyes and see my mom in the kitchen, rolling out the dough for the Christmas cookies. She is carefully cutting out tiny pieces and pressing them against a cheese grater to get just the right pattern.

When she has a huge amount of cookies prepared, she calls my father, who oversees the frying pan. He gets the oil to the right temperature and then the two of them work at immersing the cookies into the hot oil and frying them to golden brown.

Next, my mom coats the cookies thickly with honey and shakes upon them a snowdrift of little multi-colored sprinkles.

None of us knew the technical name for the delicacies prepared from this recipe, which had been handed down from Italian generations past, but since it called for a cup of white wine, we called the treats “wine cookies.”

On Christmas Eve, we always had a huge seafood feast, which was also part of the Italian tradition. The people around the table included my parents, my sister and myself, my Aunt Rita, cousins Julie and John, and my parents’ best friends, Madeline and August, whom the children called “aunt” and “uncle.”

Somehow, in the midst of wrapping presents and baking cookies, my mom also found time to prepare shrimp cocktail appetizers, followed by salads, then linguine with clam sauce and a platter of tiny oven-fried fish called by the rather unglamorous name of smelts.

When it was time for dessert, the adults sipped demitasse cups of strong Italian coffee, spiked with a liqueur called anisette, and everyone dug into trays of festive biscotti as well as wine cookies—while the aunts debated whether the current year’s batch outshone the last.

Christmas Day meant even more feasting. For dinner we always sat down to antipasto, homemade manicotti and meatballs, Italian sausage, salads and hot crusty bread.

Looking back, I see certain things I simply took for granted: My parents would always be with me, we would always live in that turquoise house in Miami, and my aunts, uncles and cousins would be a perpetual enclave of guardian angels surrounding me.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, surely I knew these guardian angels wouldn’t be at my side forever, but if that thought ever tried to emerge in the midst of the feast, I would push it away rather fiercely.

Of course, Christmas joy wasn’t just about food. There also were presents to exchange, although the pile beneath our tree was quite modest by today’s standards. According to my old diary, one year I received a doll, a jewelry box and scented bath powder, and another year, cologne, a sweater and a stuffed animal.

When I was old enough to receive an allowance, I’d trek down to Woolworth’s where, one fine day, I discovered a stunning and certainly “real” diamond necklace for my mother, at the astonishingly reasonable price of $1.99.

For my Dad, it was usually a nice bottle of Old Spice, and even if he still hadn’t used up the dregs from last year’s vial, he always made a big deal of the gift.

When I was in college, we added more chairs to the Christmas table. My sister had married, and soon there was a high chair with my nephew, Rick, perched in it, and wreaking havoc with cracker crumbs.

Then, a few years later, when he graduated to the seat with the telephone book on it, the high chair welcomed a new occupant named Jennifer.

By then, my mom had already been diagnosed with cancer and could no longer handle the huge menus, so my sister became the chief cook. But my mom still contributed her famous biscotti to the feast, and of course, the coveted wine cookies, liberally drenched in honey.

Unfortunately, my mom did not live to see some of the biggest events of her children’s lives: She missed the birth of her third grandchild, Christina, and, of course, the crew of great-grandchildren, now totaling six and counting.

She also missed meeting my husband, and I really wish she had, because I know she would have loved him for taking such good care of her daughter for the past 22 years.

I think she would have enjoyed the fact that, despite his Scottish-Irish genes, he became declared an “honorary Italian” the day I first sampled his splendid marinara sauce and proclaimed, “It tastes just like my mother’s.”

My mom would also appreciate the ways we have tried to keep her Christmas traditions alive. Each year, I bake an array of biscotti from her recipe, and most years try my hand at the wine cookies, even if they never turn out quite as beautifully as hers.

My husband and I celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the homes of beloved relatives and friends who don’t follow Italian customs, so he and I have created our own tradition of enjoying a “little Christmas Eve” a few days after the big celebration.

A few weeks ago, he surprised me by coming home from the market with a bag of familiar-looking fish, which he placed in the freezer for the upcoming feast.

Yes, they are smelts, and I can imagine my mom smiling in approval.

This year, on our “little Christmas Eve,” there will only be the two of us, but when we sip glasses of wine, we will salute the ones who went before us. And who gave us a joyous model for celebrating Christ’s birthday.

I believe very strongly in the communion of saints, so as we dip into the cache of biscotti and wine cookies, I will visualize my mom in heaven, her face beaming.

I will imagine her sampling one of my offerings, and declaring: “It is delicious, my beloved daughter. And Daddy and I wish you a very blessed Christmas!”

Lorraine Murray also writes a bi-weekly column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and has authored two books: “Why Me? Why Now?”—a spiritual guide for women with cancer—and “Grace Notes,” a collection of autobiographical essays. You may e-mail her at lorrainevmurray@yahoo.com.