Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are overwhelmed with memories of filling the trunk of the 1965 Ford Galaxy with boxes of gifts and platters of food.
Grandma Zarko died in 1965, and with her went the Christmas Eve meal of reconstituted dried cod surrounded in white. Supper moved to Marian and Bill’s, only about a block away on Pastoria Avenue but far, far away from the rooted-in-Dalmatia food and ambiance of Irma Zarko’s creaky, leaky, oh-so-cozy, farm house in the middle of town on McKinley. There was no mohair covered furniture in the house on Pastoria, nor a crusty pump organ. There was no knickknack display with shells that held the surf in their mysterious, spiral interiors. The floors didn’t lean. The walls didn’t shake when more than four people sat down to table. The air was not redolent of garlic. The refrigerator was not complimented by an ice box. There was no shiny spot next to the stove where the smoked goat meat dripped fat while it hung to cure when my father was a boy.
The house on Pastoria was solid and clean and beautiful. The fire roared at the hearth, the Christmas tree was lush with decoration. The air was scented by wassail and ham. There was a pleasant buzz of women’s voices as the various dishes were unwrapped and uncovered. The house on McKinley was Irma Zarko’s domain, the stoves were hers, the smells and the traditions. On Pastoria, holiday feasts were coordinated between branches of the family, and new traditions formed spontaneously.
And there were my aunt Marian’s windows.
Marian taught art at middle school for all of her career. She was herself an artist, designed the house on Pastoria, and planned the magical back yard with its secret corners, ferns and mosses, and a lording redwood or two. I loved daydreaming about the sorcerers and strange creatures that populated that garden while laying on the grass or in a hammock. Her kitchen always had the text of a nursery rhyme – with periodic illustrations – playfully marching across the walls just under the ceiling. And at Christmas, she created windows – translucent paper cutouts, brilliantly colored – of carolers, or Santa in his sleigh, or a manger scene, angels astonishing shepherds.
When she first began putting up her scenes, the front window was comprised of twenty or so individual panes held together with mullion. The elaborate pictures she created were a composite of pane-sized drawings that managed to rise above the glazier’s factions to render a narrative whole. Later, she and Bill replaced the fragmented window with plate glass, and her holiday job became considerably less complex. But the energy she put into the windows did not, and her plate-glass fantasies became richer and bolder with every passing year.
Our house on Mathilda Avenue had three plate-glass windows, one large and facing the street, one half that size around a corner also in the living room, and a similar one in the dining room that looked out onto the front porch. One year, I decided to try my hand at a holiday window as inspired by my talented aunt. It was a scene of several gangly figures throwing snow balls. Never mind that at that point in my life, I’d neither seen snow nor made a snowball, let alone thrown one, it was my vision and therefore valid. The color pallet ranged from off-white to grey with a bit of brown and dark blue thrown in for vibrance. My parents suggested that perhaps it were best placed in the dining room window where guests passing towards the front door would see it. I was flattered. That it held that position so as not to be visible from the street escaped me.
I worked hard at realizing my design, and installed it according to my aunt’s instructions. When I saw it up, my first impulse was immediately to take it down. Not only was it not well-rendered, it was ugly, and rather an insult to the season. But my parents encouraged me to leave it. So it stayed up for two agonizing weeks, while I cringed every time the doorbell rang, because a ring meant that another group of visiting friends had seen my work, and being an only child, could have assumed its maker to be no one else but yours truly.
When it came time to dismantle my creation, I had become so expert at denying to myself that I had had anything at all to do with the monstrosity, that I made no effort at its removal. Finally, well into January, my mother took it down while I was at school. It was a huge relief coming home that day to find the window unobstructed and clean.
“I rolled it up and put it away for next year,” she announced consolingly. Marian always saved her masterpieces, so of course I would do the same with mine.
“Or maybe you’ll make a new one,” she suggested. I shrugged and thanked her for dealing with it.
The following year there was a new window scene on Pastoria, as there was almost every year (if it were a busy fall, Marian might put up an old favorite) and having tried my hand at the art, I loved her windows even more. No one suggested that I establish a similar tradition on Mathilda Avenue, and I thought that just fine.
But food traditions were being established on Pastoria. The first Christmas Eve without Grandma Zarko’s cod, was, if I remember correctly, rather heavily populated, so recipes were sought to feed the masses. Marian discovered one for open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches. They consisted of a hamburger bun, lightly toasted, with yellow cheese melted over sliced cocktail olives. The green and red of the olives suggested Christmas. They were easy to manufacture, so dozens could be fed. Shirley found a recipe for stuffed mushrooms with bacon that was likewise easy to multiply. Trays of the stuff were made available. I loved it all.
“I don’t care what you have for supper, long as it doesn’t have cheese,” cousin Linda’s husband Rudy announced at some previous family function. “I hate cheese.”
Perhaps Marian had forgotten, or perhaps she hadn’t taken it seriously, but the supper as planned was the two items aforementioned and salad, and I seem to remember that Rudy didn’t much care for salad either.
When Linda pointed out that her husband would not eat a sandwich that was half cheese, a strategy session ensued. I believe it was Shirley who suggested that Rudy be told that in deference to his tastes, there was no cheese in the meal. Sandwiches, mushrooms, and salad were served, several people enforced the notion to Rudy that no cheeses had been harmed in the making of supper, and he ate the same meal every Christmas Eve for years. Liked it, even.
What the truth of that cheesy story is, I suspect I will never know, but it lived into tradition along with the sandwiches for at least a dozen years. The next generation hated those sandwiches, and when venues changed, they followed salted cod into the realm of memory.
Photo: the sandwiches were kind of like these, only round.