All around the world, the holiday season is a time to gather with family and friends, to share abundance, to feast, to reflect on the memories of joyful times past, and to make every effort to ensure that the future will be peaceful and prosperous for all. Here in the United States, the holiday season is celebrated in a myriad of ways bequeathed us by the thousands of immigrants who have flocked to our shores.
My own story is a case in point. My father’s mother was born and raised in Northern Ireland. A woman of mingled heritage herself, Margaret McCaffery was Scots-Irish. Dad’s Da was a product of Scots-English-Irish-French stock. Mother’s parents immigrated from Italy, her ancestry encompassed Greece and Albania. The mix makes me a true blue American, with roots in more than half a dozen European nations. And as a result Christmas at our home was a real American cultural melting pot.
The Irish-Anglo traditions were most obvious. Every window in the house had its own slim electric candle, which I had the honor of dusting off and stringing one to another with a collection of extension cords at the beginning of the season. The custom dates from Ireland’s tyrannical Cromwell times when Irish Catholics were forbidden to practice their faith and a candle burning in a home’s window signaled it was the place where a secret midnight Christmas mass would be celebrated.
Like the potato, the Christmas tree was an import. Actually an ancient German tradition, elaborately decorated evergreen trees first became popular in England in the nineteenth century during Queen Victoria’s reign, but they quickly found a place in Irish hearts. A few days before Christmas, Dad and I would trudge through the snow to buy our tree. After clearing all the furniture out of the sun porch, we set a big platform up on milk crates, stood the tree in the center, placed a sparkling star on the very top, draped it with lights, and trimmed it with ornaments and strands of shimmering tinsel. A nativity set had the place of honor under the lowest branches, and around it we built an entire village with trains, cottages, cars and people.
The rest of the house was decked with ancient Celtic decorations. Garlands of greenery threaded around and through the stair banister. A big bunch of holly adorned the front door. Clumps of mistletoe hung in every archway. Sacred symbols all of the Druids who celebrated the long night of the Winter Solstice phenomenon eons before Christianity reached Ireland.
Plants that remained green all year were thought to be magical. Because holly bore red fruit in the midst of winter’s snow it was considered a symbol of fertility. Mistletoe which thrived in the bare branches of mighty oak trees was so revered that when enemies chanced to meet beneath it they laid down their arms and embraced in peace.
Our Christmas food traditions were where the real intermingling of customs took place. Fruitcakes were the season’s first project. On Thanksgiving weekend Mom and I mixed bits of candied citron, cherries, and citrus peels with golden raisins, covered it all over with Irish whiskey, let it steep overnight, then stirred the mixture into a spicy batter, and added loads of chopped walnuts. When the dozen or so cakes had baked and cooled, we wrapped them in cloths that had been soaked in more whiskey, and tucked them away to mature until Christmas just as Irish cooks have been doing since the Middle Ages.
The next big baking event was Italian: sliced biscotti and thin crisp waffles called pizella, both flavored with anise seeds, a licorice-flavored spice that has been used for baking since the days of the Roman Empire. Then we turned to Irish recipes and made batches of macaroons and butter cookies, both studded with almonds, a nut that was introduced to Ireland by the Normans who had discovered it in the Middle East during the Crusades.
Italian food surfaced again on Christmas Eve when my mother’s sister, Matilda, prepared the traditional Feast of Seven Fishes. One year stands out in memory. On December 24th, 1963, Philadelphia was hit with a rip-roaring blizzard. Driving anywhere was out of the question. Wrapped from head to toe in foul weather gear and loaded down with presents, my high-school chum Bonnie, my parents and I set out on foot for Aunt Tilda’s house. What would have been a 7-minute drive turned into an hour-long trek. I remember laughing so hard we could hardly walk.
And what a feast it was! One by one the Seven Fishes appeared. Smoked oysters. Stuffed calamari sautéed in garlic and parsley. Deep-fried smelts. Crisp flounder filets. Angel hair pasta tossed with olive oil, garlic, bread crumbs and bits of anchovies. Fusilli swimming in a white wine clam sauce. Just when we felt we couldn’t eat another bite, Aunt Tilda carried in the night’s special treat, a savory stew of salt cod and prunes that had simmered for hours in a rich tomato gravy.
Christmas dawned dazzlingly white. For breakfast, we had the first slices of our whiskey-drenched Irish fruitcake with cups of strong Italian coffee. In the afternoon the whole family gathered at our house for turkey and all the trimmings including, thanks to Dad’s influence, a big platter of oven-browned potatoes. Friends in Ireland tell me the American bird now stars at many a Christmas feast there as well, having replaced the traditional goose or spiced beef. Dessert was a bi-cultural extravaganza: creamy ricotta cheese pie that has been made in Italy since Caesar’s time, spicy mincemeat pie that has been an Irish favorite since the 16th century, all those Irish-Italian cookies, more fruitcake, sweet Italian vermouth, and Irish coffee.
That night Bonnie and I talked for hours. It had been her first Christmas. Just days before I had been a guest for Chanukah dinner at her home where a Chanukah Bush looked very much like my own Christmas tree except that it was trimmed in Israel’s colors of blue and white. Both families had exchanged holiday gifts, a custom which has its roots in ancient European Winter Solstice rituals. We decided that although the events we honored were different, traditions had become so intertwined through the ages that the result was a universal period of feasting and rejoicing.
The older I become the more firmly I hold to the decision Bonnie and I reached more than thirty years ago. Regardless of heritage, the December holiday season brings people together in a spirit of peace and promise, joy and renewal. We were very young, but we were very wise.
Sláinte!
Recipes
Irish Fruitcake
1 pound candied citron, minced
1/4 pound candied cherries, minced
1/4 pound candied orange peel, minced
1/4 pound candied lemon peel, minced
1 pound golden raisins
1/4 cup Irish whiskey
1/2 pound walnuts coarsely chopped
1 cup soft shortening
2 cups brown sugar, packed
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup crabapple jelly
extra Irish whiskey
Combine candied fruit and raisins with whiskey and let sit overnight. Add walnuts to the fruit mixture. In a large bowl, cream shortening and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined.
Set aside. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Add dry ingredients to the sugar-egg mixture alternately with milk and jelly. Stir until well combined. Blend in candied fruit and nut mixture.
Line two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans with greased parchment paper. Fill prepared pans almost full and cover with another piece of parchment paper cut to size. Bake at 300 degrees for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes. Take fruitcake out of pans, peel away parchment paper, and cool on wire racks overnight. Wrap each fruitcake in a dishcloth that has been dipped in whiskey and wrung until it is just damp. Wrap each cloth-covered fruitcake in aluminum foil and store in an airtight container for one month.
Makes two fruitcakes.
Italian Ricotta Pie
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 pounds ricotta cheese
pastry for a single-crust pie
Beat eggs with sugar until thick and lemon-colored. Stir in vanilla.
Place ricotta cheese in a large bowl and stir in egg mixture until well blended. Pour into a deep dish pie pan fitted with an uncooked single-crust pastry shell. Fill to within one inch of the fluted edge. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 50 minutes. Filling will puff up during cooking. Remove from oven and let rest at room temperature for several hours before serving. As the pie cools, the filling with settle. Makes 8 servings.
Irish Mincemeat Pie
1/2 pound dark raisins
1/2 pound golden raisins
1/2 pound currants
1/4 pound almonds
1/4 pound candied orange peel
1/2 pound Granny Smith apples
6 ounces shredded beef suet
1/2 pound light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
grated rind and juice of 1 large lemon
1/4 cup Irish whiskey
Chop the dried fruit and almonds coarsely. Peel, core and grate the apples and mix with the dried fruit. Stir in the shredded suet, sugar, spices, lemon rind, lemon juice, and whiskey. Cover and leave for 6 hours. Spoon into sterilized dry jars, top off with more whiskey, cover and store in a cold dark place for one month. Makes enough filling for two or three pies.
When ready to make pies, fill prepared pie shells almost full. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour, or until crust is golden.
Traditional Irish Food – Theodora FItzgibbon
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the November/December 1998 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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