Christmas Eve Pizza

Note:  Alicia Moritisen Walters, one of the girls I taught in Mia Maids 15 years ago, asked me to write a story for a book she was self publishing about the magic of a child's Christmas. I was a bit perplexed about what to write because my mom and especially my dad didn't embrace the Santa myth and I played it down with my own children as well. In fact when Thomas was five a friend of mine asked me to ask him not to tell her son that Santa wasn't real. In typical Thomas fashion he said "I would never do that mom, it is important to Greg."  I have taken "literary license" with some of the events, mainly with the timeline to make the story fit Alicia's parameters. But the gist of the story is true and I vividly remember putting those olives on my fingers.

Christmas Eve in my Grandparents’ basement in the 1960s was where I learned that black olives were meant to be worn on my fingertips as well as for eating. My Grandmother had long, silver hair that she always wore elegantly wrapped around her head like a crown. She taught English at the high school and was somewhat intimidating to my brothers, sisters and me. Grandpa had eyes that twinkled and looked impossibly tall with a thin, pencil mustache. Our family didn’t eat at their house often because the seven of us, born seven years apart, were too many and probably too noisy for Grandma and Grandpa to fit around their kitchen table. 

This is how I will always remember Grandma and Grandpa

But that all changed on Christmas Eve. They always invited our family and our cousins and aunts and uncles for a traditional Christmas Eve dinner. We all went down to the basement kitchen and large family room. It was so exciting. We didn’t know anyone else who had a kitchen in their basement! Grandma used it to can fruits and vegetables in the summer because it was so much cooler in the basement than upstairs. The only furniture in the kitchen was a vintage, metal-legged table piled high with food. There was: turkey, rolls, a green molded Jell-O Christmas salad with marshmallows, nuts and cream cheese and the relish dish. It was a divided,  cut-crystal plate that held: carrot sticks, celery stuffed with peanut butter, pickles and a pile of pitted, black olives.

One Christmas Eve I watched an older cousin stand around the table before the blessing on the food. I saw her sneak an olive, but instead of eating it, she put it on the end of her first finger. She glanced around, saw that no adults were looking and poked another finger into an olive. Pretty soon all ten fingers were tipped with shiny black olives. She walked away from the table nibbling at the olives on the ends of her fingers. I couldn’t wait to try it. I knew my Mother wouldn’t approve. It was bad manners to play with your food. And ten olives for one child was way too many. So I decided to just do one hand. Five olives were still a luxury. I walked over to the relish dish and hurriedly loaded the fingers of my left hand with olives. Just as I finished I looked up and saw my Mother watching. I knew I was in trouble. But she just smiled and said “Make sure you eat them all.”  They tasted delicious.

Christmas Eve with Uncle Joe and Aunt Evelyn's family. From left to right: back row; Aunt Evelyn holding David, Aunt Gay, Grandma's sister, Stacey, Mom, Brett, Uncle Joe, Joey, Roark, Grandma, Grandpa; front row: Valerie, Jeanne, Jayne, Annie, Shelley and Jared in front.

In the 1970s Christmas Eve dinner was moved to my cousins' or our house as Grandma and Grandpa got older. We still had our traditional dinner except one terrible year. An aunt and uncle had just moved from back east and volunteered to have Christmas Eve at their house. She had some new, fancy ideas for dinner instead of our old-fashioned, traditional meal. When we got there, all we saw was a soup tureen and a basket of crackers the table. We were appalled to learn that Christmas Eve dinner was tomato soup! No turkey, rolls or a relish plate!  Just plain, old tomato soup. We didn’t care that it was homemade or “all the rage.” Tomato soup was for Saturday afternoon lunch with grilled cheese sandwiches, not Christmas Eve dinner! My poor aunt never lived it down.

I eventually got married and started a family of my own.  After college, we moved far away from our families across the country. I had kept up the traditional Christmas Eve dinner including the relish plate with black olives, and taught my children how to put them on their fingers. One Christmas Eve a friend and I planned to have Christmas Eve together. Between us we had eight children ages three to ten.  We were both away from our extended families and thought it would be fun for the children to get together.

Christmas Eve was on a Sunday that year. While we were at church that morning, a terrible thunderstorm came through and the entire area lost power. We were hopeful it would come back on so we could cook the turkey. But as the hours passed it became apparent that there wouldn’t be enough time for the turkey and rolls to cook. When the power finally came on we wondered what we could do to still have a special, Christmas Eve dinner.

We both examined the contents of our refrigerators and between us, we realized we had the ingredients for homemade pizza, including the black olives. I made the dough and we put all the toppings out on the counter. We told the children we were going to have a special Christmas Eve dinner: personal pizzas. We gave each child a piece of dough and showed them how to shape their own individual crust on the cookie sheet. Then they got to choose their own toppings, as much as they wanted. I watched one of my children load his pizza with as much pepperoni and cheese as it could possibly hold!  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I was watching and would make him put some pepperoni back. I just smiled at him and said,  “Make sure you can eat it all.”  As we sat around the table eating our Christmas Eve pizza I looked at the smiling pizza-smeared faces. “This is the best Christmas Eve dinner ever!” they all agreed.

This picture is a few years before the Pizza Christmas Eve, but it is one of my favorite Christmas photos.

The next year I asked my children what they wanted for Christmas Eve dinner.  In unison they all yelled, “Homemade personal pizzas!”  “But what about turkey and rolls and a relish plate?” I asked, “It’s a tradition.” “We can have that on Christmas Day” they said, “we want pizza like last year!” I thought about it and realized that my children didn’t have grandparents and cousins around to celebrate Christmas Eve with, so why not make a new tradition for our family. We have had our traditional homemade pizza on Christmas Eve ever since. Even now, when my children and grandchildren live far away from me and Christmas Eve is smaller and quieter, I have no desire for turkey and rolls. I make personal pizza and always load mine with black olives. And sometimes I slip one on the tip of my finger for tradition's sake. 

It was that stormy Christmas Eve that I learned that while some traditions, like my beloved decorations and music will always remain the same, others can and should be exchanged for something different. Sometimes the best traditions are not planned, they just happen.