My father would have been 105. He died at 95. He was in a lot of pain with bed sores and his knees, plus he missed my mother, so it is OK that he is gone.
But he was Christmas to me. He had the old-fashioned spirit and would lead us in carols as he drove us around the city to visit relatives on Christmas Eve. They weren’t just songs on the radio to us.
The spirit was real. The old Italian magic of Christmas Eve, when miracles take place because the Messiah is about to be born. There is nothing like it today. No anger, pouting, whining, or crying for weeks before Christmas-—parents and children alike. The true spirit of joy, like an observation during mourning but the reverse! No one who has not observed it can understand it.
My uncle Nazereno saw a miracle through the kitchen window, a string of lights where there weren’t any lights. He pointed it out and I saw it too.
No Christmases will ever match those. When the family got too big, they had to stop. No more old folks, the ones who remembered.