Natale a Napoli

Christmas with the Gambardella family is loud.  Really, really loud.  On more than one occassion both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day before asking me to translate, my mother asked me if people were fighting.  They weren't, though.  It's just how they talk.  ...just how we talk.  (Excluding myself from that description would be incredibly dishonest).  

The alcohol probably doesn't help to keep the volume in check, though.  On the 23rd my dad went on what might actually be the world's longest liquor run, and came back with a gazillion (an actual, scientific number) bottles of wine and a number of after dinner drinks that although intended to be slowly sipped ended up in shot glass after shot glass.  After doing the math Christmas morning, given the number of empty wine bottles and number of people drinking, it came down to about a bottle per drinker at dinner on Christmas Eve.  Because we are a family of CHAMPS.

Food, and the process of cooking and eating it with the people you love, is an important part of Italian culture.  I don't need to tell you that.  So, the fact that my holiday involved eating like royalty probably isn't much of a surprise.  The phenomenal, delicious, easily restuarant quality food that we ate two days in a row was more than my inner foodie could handle.  I can assure you though that I left the table with my heart as full as my stomach.

Christmas Eve dinner, as per tradition, consists of fish and seafood.  A lot of Italian-American families in the states have kept this tradition alive, too.  But we do it better.  Forget the shrimp cocktail you buy in bulk at Costco, we ate those beautiful, giant shrimps with the heads and legs still on them.  And prawns.  And octopus.  And squid and anchovies and sea bass and seafood salad and lobster and scallops and spaghetti with clam sauce and clams and oysters on the half shell.  And caviar.  Does your family eat caviar?  I didn't think so. 

The next day, we ate meat.  And NOT a turkey.  (I have never understood why so many people choose to eat the most overrated meat so soon after Thanksgiving).  We ate steak.  Delicious, pink steak.  And lamb.  And cinghiale.  Do you know what that is?  It's wild boar.  Because, as I previously stated, we are a family of CHAMPS.

I saved the most important part of the holiday for last, however, because the most important part of Christmas year was not tangible.  Or edible.  (Or drinkable).  The most important, most moving, and most beautiful part of my holiday this year was the fact that for the first time in almost twenty years, my father celebrated Christmas with his sibilings and his dad.  You could see the joy in everyone's eyes, you could feel it in the air and in your bones.  I don't think I ever really realized what a sacrifice my dad makes every single year at this time, and how hard it must be for him.  As if I don't already have a million reasons to appreciate the man, this Christmas I found another one.  One that I really should have found a while ago.

Despite all the joy of Christmastime, especially this year, holidays are always bittersweet.  Yes, it is nice, and important, to appreciate the new faces at the table, but you can't celebrate a holiday as important as this without also remembering the faces who aren't here anymore, and without wondering whether or not the table will look the same next year.  Life is fragile, and there is no way of knowing what is to come.  Luckily for me, I'm a Gambardella, and the Gambardellas combat this fragility and uncertainty with laughter, togetherness, faith, unshakeable optimism, and a whole lot of love.