THE COLD DAYS, THEY ARE COMING!

It is the favorite part of the year for me. Some people like the spring with its uncertainty, some like the summer with its heat and humidity, but for me, give me the fall or autumn months. Why? Because I understand best my heritage as an Italian American, when in that period.

If we take a look at it all, except for Easter the most sacred holiday in the old country, All Souls Day, All Saints Day, even Thanksgiving are taken on as holidays of great importance. The obviousness of what All Souls Day and All Saints Day mean to church-going, God-loving Italians, so does Thanksgiving has a sacred meaning to those very same people who also are patriotic. It is the truth of patriotism you find in their hearts and souls. They are Americans for real, giving their thread of love, talents, and respect to the culture they adopted and worked so hard for.

Making a feast is an Italian specialty, bringing in the best dishes or wearing the finest is all part of the celebration.

Every Thanksgiving when I grew up in Brooklyn, every aunt, uncle, and cousin and everyone in my household had to be present for dinner at Grandma Francesco’s house. Her extra long kitchen enabled her to butt two tables together, head to head. It was overflowing with relatives and food, bottles of wine and soda, and of course the small table that seated the bambinos. Thanksgiving Day was as big as Christmas Day big as almost Christmas Eve and bigger than even being Italian it was being Italian-AMERICAN! Grandma had a huge turkey stuffed with Sausage stuffing she made and alongside that turkey was a capon. Grandma didn’t care for turkey so she made capon for herself.

Although feasting was the culmination of the holidays, the preparation was what kindled the excitement. It always seemed on gray cold blustery days mom or grandma would go out to the various mom and pop stores to shop in Brooklyn. Buying vegetables such as finocchio to pour a little olive oil on, salt and eat divinely, carciofi or artichoke to stuff, and various nuts, especially chestnuts, to cross before putting into the oven. There was the fishmonger who sold you baccala to make a salad with olives, lobsters for Christmas Eve and scungilli, calamari and crabs, shrimp and mussels or clams or all. Along with the haul came long loaves of warm Italian bread, and in that bakery you found the pastries to choose from. There had to be at least one canola for each person at the feast.

Out of the dark deep cellar came the most prized of celebratory items, Grandpa’s homemade wine and grandma’s homemade sauce, all bottled with love, care, pride, and devotion to the art of making each. God forbid you didn’t mention how good it was if grandma or grandpa didn’t smack you, your spouse or even the newborn would!

One day I will find a distant place to sit quietly and alone, and shed a few tears for all those days of yore, I will cry for losing all that wonderfulness that existed and doesn’t anymore. It still pains me when I think of what we have today and what I once had as a child on those cold fall days.