Memories of Holidays

Holidays are rarified moments, and the memories they hold are stacked one upon another like checkers taken off the board. Most families, including mine, have photo albums filled with pictures of dining room tables groaning with the fixings for the feast and encircled with smiling faces. You can almost hear the chorus of CHEESE as you flip through the pages. 

My childhood memories are mostly kept alive through the photos in those albums. Seven decades is a long time to remember who said what at the dinner table. I have sweet memories of family gatherings in Brooklyn at Bubbies’ apartment. I was fascinated with the elevator in her building, just high enough to reach the buttons. I wanted to push every one of them, much to the chagrin of my mother and the lady with the two-wheeled shopping cart filled with bags of groceries. 

When all of us were seated at my grandmother’s table and all 5 feet and a few inches of my beloved Bubbie, always the last to sit, would taste the meal she had been preparing since long before sunrise, she would kiss the back of her hand and say. “Oh, this is so delicious, you did such a good job.”  The table would be filled with laughter, better than any benediction, and we would all dig in. 

She was as kind to herself as she was to her children and grandchildren. I was lucky enough to see her hold my son Eric in her arms at my mother and Santo’s house in Smithtown. When Mark was born, I believe she was living with Aunt Lisa and Uncle David in the city, and then she had to be placed in a nursing home because she was suffering from Alzheimer’s. 

When I would visit her, the woman who had taken me to my first day of Nursery school and held my hands in hers as she taught me to wash my grubby hands before sitting down at the table and to roll my clothes instead of folding them as I packed them in a trunk I would take to summer camp, I would show her pictures of my sons. She would call me by my father’s name, Jerry, and think she was looking at pictures of my brother Andy and me instead of my sons, Eric and Mark. I would just hug her and tell her I loved her instead of correcting her. I knew she would forget again but I hoped that she would remember the warmth of the hug. 

I think Passover and Hanukah were my two favorite holidays. Passover because there was a part to play for the children as the adults would sip the wine and eat the bitter herbs. I did have a problem with sitting. To quote from a 2020 article in the New Yorker magazine,” to cultivate the art of Sitzfleisch. Literally “sitting meat,” this excellent German term indicates both the material that one sits with—the tush, the booty, the rump, whatever—and the ability to remain seated upon it for periods of great duration.”  Passover certainly requires a mass quantity of Sitzfliesch.  A hyper little boy who has had his fix of processed sugar and red dye number x finds it challenging to maintain. 

Hannukah spelled Chanukah or Hanukah, was our revenge for the capitalist’s version of Christmas, which was America’s method of boosting the nation’s GDP, increasing credit card debt, and deforesting North America’s pine and fir forests. On the good side, a Christmas tree farm was the birthplace of Taylor Swift. 

Whatever your preferred spelling of the Jewish Christmas, we got to taunt the non-Jews with presents for eight days instead of one. Although theirs was filled with things you wanted, one had to factor in the depth and breadth of Santa Claus’ credit line and the naughty or nice threat of coal in your stocking they had to live with all year long, particularly in the months leading up to Christmas. 

My favorite holiday meal is the staple of any Jewish home. Mazah ball soup with two soft as-a-cloud matzah balls, a chunk of carrot, and a few strands of chicken. The main course could be one of several dishes, and if Bubbie was cooking, it wouldn’t have mattered because they would have been perfectly prepared. A roast, brisket, or chicken, no matter, I would have had seconds.  Kugle and a side of string beans, and I would have waddled off to bed a happy boy!

Sholom