December 16, 2006
Saturday

Things are mostly in place for the party. I made the lasagnas this afternoon up to the point of baking, thawed the ham balls, and made a povitica, my first one. This confection is known informally as “nut roll.” It’s a traditional Croatian/Polish sweet bread with a walnut filling. My father’s family was Polish, but I don’t have any memories of old country cookery from that side. My grandmother died when I was two. My grandfather lived with my Aunt Florence (my father’s sister) in the house they grew up in outside Philadelphia, a more complicated trip then than it is now, and we saw them only two or three times a year. Aunt Florence had married an Italian man and seemed to have been absorbed into his culture.

While the povitica was rising this morning I went out for the mail. A note in the Christmas card from my cousin informed me that my Aunt Florence (her mother) died in October at the age of 94. The choice of a povitica as something new for this year seemed appropriate.

Much of Christmas for me is about remembering. Tomorrow I’ll put in my order for poinsettias to decorate the church sanctuary on Christmas Eve and through Epiphany. We can place the poinsettias in honor of or in memory of someone. I always place one in memory of my parents, noting that my father’s birthday was the Feast of Stephen. He’d be 91 this year. And one in memory of Ron’s Aunt Ezenne, whose birthday was Christmas Eve. She’d be 88. Those birthday dates get lost in the fa-la-la. I can’t remember ever getting my father a birthday card.

And I always set a poinsettia in memory of Sister Mary Thecla, R.S.M, my sixth grade teacher who taught us to make folded paper stars, and Sister Mary Rita, R.S.M., my teacher in seventh and eighth grade, who gave us the Poinsettia Song.

Sister Rita was a tiny woman. She was of Irish heritage, born in the late part of the nineteenth century, and probably grew up in one of the coal towns that dotted central Pennsylvania in those days. She had several expressions that live on in the memories of her students. She abhorred idleness and was always exhorting us not to sit around “like bumps on a log.” And if we acted like know-it-alls, she’d say, “Who do you think you are, D’Arcy McGee?”

D’Arcy McGee was an Irish patriot who emigrated to America and then made his way to Canada, where he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and worked for the cause of Canadian independence from Britain. He began to moderate his radical Irish views and ultimately denounced the violence-prone Fenian Brotherhood in America. He was assassinated in 1868, probably by members of that group. It is unclear to me why, as it is unclear after forty-five years whether, in comparing us to McGee, Sister thought we were acting above ourselves or emulating a scoundrel.

What is clear to me is the fondness I have for the Poinsettia Song. I’d come up through the grades hearing it every year from Sister Rita’s class at the school Christmas assembly, and in seventh and eighth grades, after what is remembered as endless practices, I sang it myself with classmates I still see from time to time. It’s sweet, sentimental, with a nineteenth-century lilt that brings those simpler times to mind.

Down in the garden, growing in rows.
Nodding our heads when soft the wind blows.
Close by a window, over the wall,
Spreading our sweetness to one and all.

Here are poinsettias, petaled in red.
Flowers for the holidays, sweetness we shed.
Glowing like living flames, Christmas we share.
Bringing you happiness, everywhere.

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)