Traditions!

Me in the traditional costume of my Alberesh Village in Italy. These are our particular colors, setting us apart from the other Alberesh villages. This costume is about one hundred years old and worn by my family throughout all those years.

Traditions!!!

I grew up with several traditions, some related to holidays and some not. In our family it was tradition for my mother to hand make all of our Halloween costumes every year. It was tradition in the spring to weed and plant petunias and pansies along the stone wall in the front yard. It was tradition at Easter time to pluck all the orange pollen laden inner stems of the lilies at our Catholic Church. It was also tradition for all of our birthday cakes to be made from scratch in the flavor and design that we wanted. One year my mother presented me with a store made decorated cake. I started crying immediately because I thought that she didn't love me anymore.

Traditions are events that are repeated, sometimes for generations. These can be family traditions, village traditions, cultural traditions, and national traditions. 

Some traditions may not make sense to people who are not a part of the conditioning and comfort of them.

And some traditions change and transform. Case in point - Honey Balls.

For many years I would make a Christmas holiday platter that featured Honey Balls or Struffoli. Feel free to Google images for Struffoli as there will be many examples. (This is just my way to justify the following story about a tradition that needed to stop.)

The week before Christmas I would visit all my friends on Nantucket with a full platter of traditional Italian treats, as well as keep full platters in my house for those who stopped by before I got to them. The center of the platter was loaded with Struffoli. Surrounding the main attraction were sweet bowknots, fig cookies, and a few other gems.

I happily made Struffoli every year for many years as the most perfect gift. During my first winter waitressing at The Pines restaurant in Nantucket, I excitedly told everyone about these incredible traditional treats. I would bring them a platter of honey balls (Struffoli) as soon as I made them. The count down began to when I would stand over a hot vat of oil all day frying honey balls. Finally the day came, and I gleefully walked into the restaurant kitchen with a platter of beautiful honey balls for everyone. People all took one and popped them into their mouths. There was no comment...from anyone. Then a waitress' daughter came in the kitchen and enthusiastically asked for a honey ball. As she started to chew, the prep chef spoke up, "You have only just begun to chew." I was shocked and hurt! 

"What?!" I gasped, "You don't like the honey balls?" Well, that opened it up and the next five minutes were filled with comments like, "Those are the most disgusting things I have ever tasted." and "I think shoe leather would rank higher...by alot..."

MY TRADITION! It was being stomped on and I had no way of ever preparing for this!

As the night wore on, it just got worse. I would pick up a meal for a patron only to discover a skewer of honey balls on the side of the plate. I looked at the chef incredulously, and he smirked, "Twice fried honey balls." And sure enough, upon further painful looking, the honey balls had gone through the frying process one more time, at my humorous expense.

The final straw came when I was going back into the kitchen as a waitress was coming out, the food tray lifted high above her shoulder. I noticed that she was swinging her head quite a bit. Something dangling from her ears caught my eye. OH MY GAWD! She was wearing earrings made from MY honey balls!! The honey glistened off her neck and little bits of confetti candy stuck there, taunting me at their displacement. I could hold on to my levelheadedness no longer. "YOU ARE ALL MEAN" I shouted, withering away.

Back at home I explained to my husband what had happened, ending with this longing statement. "Can you believe that they didn't like honey balls?!" A longing statement that hung in the air for a very long time. The obvious next move was painfully apparent.

" I  don't like honey balls." He finally said it.

"What?" I questioned, beginning to quiver, thinking of the many years of many platters that I had given to many friends. "Honey balls are gross?!"

"Yes, they are really gross."

"Why didn't you ever tell me?!" I demanded. " I have been giving them to people for years! I thought they were delicious! My family loves them!!" I was starting to feel indignant reflecting on the insane jonesing that
my family of origin and my children have for our annual Struffoli. We have been known to eat an entire freshly made platter of them in five minutes or less!

From that day forward, the tradition of giving Struffoli to friends and neighbors ended. (You all can thank Jay T. for that) My daughters and my family of origin still make them and eat them passionately.

Traditions can start out of something that was something unusual. My desperate sanity check one cold lonely night started off a twenty five year favorite tradition. 

Living on Nantucket in the late 80s during the winter was a pretty grueling experience for a mainland grown young mom, especially during the holidays. One chilly night I was alone with the girls, and having severe cabin/island fever. I bundled us all up, put them each in their car seats, and drove off from Surfside in a jolly attempt to see holiday lights. I drove...and I drove...and I kept driving. Where were all the houses loaded with bright colored lights? I drove out to deserted Cisco, and deserted Madaket, finally desperately crying and making my way out the great distance to Sconset. I think I saw five houses with holiday lights on that freezing cold, pitch black Nantucket night. When I returned home with the girls, my sanity was no better however I vowed that next year I would find more houses with more lights on this 14 miles long X 3-5 miles wide island.

A tradition blossomed which continues to this day. Whether we are on the mainland or Nantucket, or both, near the Christmas date, we pick our night, get our hot drinks (soy peppermint hot chocolate for me, hot chocolate for Meg, and usually a coffee mix for Alli), blast the Christmas tunes and drive around to look at lights. There are so many to look at, even on Nantucket! We have our favorites in both places and save them for the very last. 

Over the years my stepson jumped in on the mainland version of the tradition, then my housemate Brian and his nephew and my foster son, Adam. More recently my dear Chrissy and her daughter Hannah got the big mainland tour. Sadly, during this year's tour, the best ever house, which was in Bedford, no longer was lit up. I saved it for second to last, as is tradition, but when I drove up with Chrissy and Hannah, there were no lights! No blow up globes! No life size moving Santa in the window! No nutcrackers, no Disney characters. Nothing. That part of the tradition had changed without consideration of me. I texted the girls as I sat outside the house in disbelief. I never imagined the tradition would stop. But it did. Traditions, without our consent, sometimes just end.

Luckily I recovered hope, thinking about how I would be on Nantucket just a week later. Over the years the girls had discovered, and then taken me to an island house that was flashy and fun it its own way. Happily I report that all is well in the expanding Nantucket winter light drive.

 

May Today be a First Day to Begin to reflect on our traditions. Where did they come from? Do they still nourish us, our family, and the world? Might we need to let go of a tradition? Shift the recipients of a tradition? Grieve the loss of a tradition? Allow a tradition to transform and flow? Start a new tradition?

May today be a First Day to Begin to celebrate all of the things that we have done as they were passed down to us through ancestry, community, and a larger world. May it also be a First Day to Begin to discern that which we want to maintain, throw away, and/or reform, as it is our right and obligation to do so in our journey of expanding and awakening life!

My family village traditional festival night...pull up a chair, a platter of Struffoli, and relax. You have only yet begun to watch and listen....and chew....