Editor’s Letter

Christmas Past and Present

Carrying on traditions may be the best way to make new ones

Written by MARIE SPEED

alking to the Gismondi family about how they celebrate Christmas (page 58) was one of the times I realize I love what I do. It’s not every day you get to see people’s faces light up when they remind one another what it’s like Christmas morning when the little ones pop out of bed. “It’s so much fun in the morning when they get up and they see all the gifts,” Rosaria Gismondi says. “And they jump on the bed saying, ‘Santa came! Santa came!’ and we say ‘Who? What? Are you sure?’”

Or how his daughters describe Vincent Gismondi cooking for them (“he has a passion for it”) and his saying how he was “born into the restaurant business. … I had a crib in the kitchen in Italy where we used to do all the cooking; as a little baby child I could smell the fresh chicken soup being made.”

Hearing their holiday traditions stirred up the long-ago ones of my own family, like the moment on Christmas morning we were allowed to descend the stairs in single file—after all of us, including mom and dad, had gotten up, brushed our teeth, and put on our bathrobes. Waiting for everyone to do all that seemed to take forever; we were hopping-around crazy. We weren’t allowed to even see the tree until we were all perfectly ready and civilized.

Years later, I remember when it snowed on Christmas Eve in Colorado when snow was not forecast, or the year our friends brought my dad to us Christmas morning from his room at the hospital. And years after that, when we met at mom and dad’s house, now in a rental pool, and managed to decorate a tree. Almost everything we remembered had been removed from the house, but there we were, the three kids and their families, reminiscing, hanging stockings, carrying on the traditions we had always shared.

I think this is a good year to remember the ways we grew up, how we celebrated holidays when the world was so different. We were all younger then, or we have kids and grandkids now, or we are alone or empty nesters or retired or in between houses or jobs or spouses. It’s comforting to recall those times of great joy and promise, like the Gismondis do every year, and to celebrate how those times made us who we are.

And, even better, how those memories can be the building blocks for making new ones.