The best of timesLocal notables share their favorite holiday traditions December 14,
2007 12:21:19 PM
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Holidays and their attendant celebrations foster memories — of all kinds, to be sure — but it’s the good ones we strive to re-create. Almost universally, these have to do with spending time with family and friends, with whom we sing, eat, dance, tell stories and laugh till our stomachs hurt. In the reminiscences that follow, some local celebrities share their favorite holiday traditions, reminding us once again of what’s truly important during these end-of-year days.
Many different ethnic backgrounds come to the fore during the holidays. Who knew that Governor and Mrs. Carcieri shared a Scandinavian background? They host a Swedish Christmas Eve that pays homage to the governor’s mother’s family, the Andersons, and to SUZANNE CARCIERI’s Norwegian background. The evening includes a smorgasbord, a Yankee Swap, a visit from Santa Claus, and “a sing-along with Aunt Reinette Anderson.” Rhode Island’s first lady notes that the Governor's grandmother, Ingrid Anderson, attended the Swedish Christmas Eve until she was 100 years old. What’s in those meatballs?
GUY ABELSON, a board member of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, as well as a long-time activist and restaurateur, also remembers a Swedish Christmas Eve with his father playing Santa Claus (his brother Neal has taken over the duties). “Santa” always has stories “about us all — the good and the bad,” Abelson observes. His family makes pickled herring for their smorgasbord.
Food figures large in many people’s activities. RICARDO PITTS-WILEY, artistic director of Mixed Magic Theatre, remembers that after gifts, dinner, and a visit to his grandparents in Detroit, they would all come home and his mother would warm up a second dinner: “This meal always seemed to taste better and brought our family closer together and I carry it on with my family to this day.”
And of course food would be a centerpiece for the family of a chef. JOE HAFNER, executive chef at Gracie’s, goes to his parents’ house, where his mother’s extended Italian family prepares seven fish dishes. “We are however, also Polish,” he relates, “so there are pierogies and a few extra fish thrown in. And . . . since my father's side of the family is Irish, the only thing they will eat is lobster bisque, and we have to make a roast beef or pork. I end up frying smelts for my Polish/Italian Uncle Roger, who eats them so fast they never make it to the plate.”
Another vivid food memory belongs to KAREN ADAMS, news anchor for WPRI/Channel 12. “Growing up in landlocked Missouri, the holidays were really the one time of year we splurged on seafood,” she remembers. “Every year on Christmas morning, my dad, grandfather and I would eat raw oysters. I learned at an early age to just put a drop of hot sauce on the oyster and let it slide. Everybody else in the family was a little grossed out, but my dad and I could put down the oysters!”
Another devotee of the seven fishes tradition is radio host and ex-mayor VINCENT “BUDDY” CIANCI. His family gathers at his sister’s house on Christmas Eve, and the celebration continues at his home on Christmas Day. “The highlight of the festivities occurs when we sing and act out ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ ” he emphasizes. “It is truly a sight to see and hear!”
GHISLAINE JEAN-MAHONE, performer and co-founder of In House Freestyle, will honor her Haitian background with a big pot of Soupe Joumou for everyone on New Year’s Day. It’s a special pumpkin, beef and vegetable soup that had been forbidden to the slaves until independence was declared on January 1, 1804. It’s now considered to bring good luck by eating it on New Year’s.
Another good luck food-eating tradition is observed in State Representative GRACE DIAZ’s Dominican family. Everyone grabs a dozen grapes to symbolize the 12 months of the year and begins to eat them one by one during the last 12 seconds before midnight. “It means that every month will be under our control, while we have the grape in our mouth,” says Diaz.
Diaz’s family gathers for both Christmas and New Year’s Eve, to cook, drink, and dance meringue, bachata, and salsa. One particular song they listen to is “Llego Juanita” (“Juanita Come Back”), sung by Milly Quezada. “Juan¬ita is an immigrant who returned to the Dominican Republic after working in the USA for a long time,” Diaz explains. “Juanita symbolizes every Dominican who has lived in the USA and dreams of coming back for Christmas to see the relatives, but it also means those who stay here and feel homesick to be away from the warm crazy unique street Christmas party in the Dominican Republic.”
DR. PETER SIMON, assistant medical director at the Rhode Island Department of Health, also loves that Dominican street party: “My favorite thing to do during the ‘holidays’ is to leave the USA and escape from frenzied shoppers and annoying TV commercials to visit the Dominican Republic, where ‘holidays’ means family, food, fun, and dancing.”
Congressman JAMES LANGEVIN has a strong emphasis on family right here in Rhode Island: “In recent years, I go to a Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s in Warwick, where my nieces are in the choir. On Christmas night, I host my sister, mom, two brothers, a nephew, and four nieces at my house.”
A different recollection of family gatherings remains in ED SHEA’s memory (he’s artistic director of 2nd Story Theatre): "There were six kids and two parents and the eight of us descended on relatives in Fall River, visiting house after house. I'm sure they dreaded the sound of the car as we pulled in — a veritable cacophony of Sheas.”
Providence Mayor DAVID CICILLINE treasures two traditions from his Italian and Jewish heritage: the gathering of his entire family for the Feast of Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve and the lighting of the menorah on the first night of Hanukkah at Temple Beth-El.
Unusual and quite personalized traditions have been the norm for KELLY BATES, meteorologist for WJAR/Channel 10, and CURT COLUMBUS, artistic director of Trinity Reper¬tory Company. When Columbus was still in Chicago, he’d link up with a good friend and go to a “trashy movie” on Christmas Day and then back home for pizza and red wine: “It was like being a kid again (plus red wine), which we always thought was very much in the spirit of the day.”
Bates and her husband decorate their tree “to the sounds of Perry . . . Farrell — not Como. When my husband and I celebrated our first Christmas together more than a decade ago, we didn't have traditional Christmas music on hand, so we decked the halls to Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction. Nothing says Christmas quite like the first notes of ‘Up the Beach’ — at least to us.”
Another non-traditional tradition has developed at Chez Pascal, according to co-owner KRISTIN GENNUSO: “We do a very quiet celebration of Festivus (from Seinfeld). One of our customers comes in and decorates a pole that is in the bar and he then sits at the bar with a few friends and enjoys a tasting menu . . . if Jerry only knew.”
Since his Cambodian family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, choreographer/dancer SOKEO ROS just goes out with friends on New Year’s Eve, though he does a bit of Christmas with his daughter, whose mother is Dominican.
New Year’s Day is musician/composer CHRIS TURNER’s favorite holiday: “It sets the year in motion with a new energy — the bigger the hoo-doo, the better the coming year. Hence I try to celebrate with joy, food, music and, most importantly, friends.”
Providence Black Rep’s artistic director DONALD KING takes a more reflective approach to the New Year, setting personal and professional priorities for the coming year and “giving thanks for the many blessings in my life.”
Reaching out to other people is a part of many end-of-year traditions. ROBERT L. CAROTHERS, president of the University of Rhode Island, makes a point to “craft a holiday poem to go in the many cards we send — to say something that's personal but also represent the University too, not an easy thing to do!” State Senator Josh Miller stressed that his Jewish/Methodist/Catholic family unit “has toned down the gift giving over the years and put charity as a strongly encouraged alternative — this year Crossroads or Heifer International.”
RABBI LESLIE GUTTERMAN, from Temple Beth-El, designates a special gift that helps children. And he invites a member of his congregation — this year Brown professor Barbara Tannenbaum — to speak at the first Sabbath service of the new calendar year on the theme: “My hopes and dreams of the future.”
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