ROUSES_Holiday2018Magazine-FINAL.indd

Many Jewish folks like us celebrated Christmas like it was a national holiday rather than a religious one. My cousins and I were all about Santa. Every year, the eight of us would pile together into two beds and, every year, my clever Uncle Marshall would lull us to sleep with tall tales of his imaginary great-great- uncle, a cowboy named Slats Gottsegen. Slats was the hero of every story. He ran a deli in, of all places, Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his wife Sarah. The villain was Bart Finkelstein, with Abe Pincus playing a starring role. In one story, Abe was credited as the inventor of Styrofoam. (Years later I was disappointed to discover that the inventor of Styrofoam was not Abe, but a Dow Chemical engineer named Ray McIntire.) The next morning, pajama-clad and bursting with excitement, we’d check our stockings for candy and line up by height in front of a curtained door to see what Santa brought. My grandfather would pull back the curtain and open the door with a flourish. And there they were: unwrapped gifts laid out in every available space, something for each cousin— it was like a children’s fantasy- land. After feasting on presents and a quick breakfast, we would gather and exchange gifts. My grandfather always played master of ceremonies, and one by one — the tree practically lifted by the presents piled high under it — we watched as gifts were offered and opened. There were sweet gifts, romantic gifts for spouses and funny gifts — my favorite being a tie with food stains passed around each year between my grandfather and uncles. It was always presented as though it were new, in a perfect Countess Mara box. With 15 people, the gift exchange, a fun but excruciat- ingly long marathon of merriment, took all day. A few days after the festivities, my grandparents would head back to Alexandria; Lea’s pies, Clara’s chopped liver — and sometimes the cat food — all long gone, just money lost at the racetrack. With New Year’s Eve mere days away, my dad’s mother, Granny, would arrive from Shreveport. She was in charge of babysitting us when the clock struck midnight. As a treat, she gave us a pink squirrel, a sweet cocktail the same shade as Pepto-Bismol. We thought it was so fancy and special! But Granny knew she’d be in bed before midnight because, with that touch of liqueur in us, we’d never make it to see the ball drop. Even now, I think fondly of Granny every New Year’s Eve, and toast to her memory (though usually with champagne instead of pink squirrel). The memories we make in the holiday season define who we are, remind us where we come from, and inspire and rekindle traditions that know countless generations. In this issue of Rouses Everyday , we commemorate the holidays, the memories we made and the food we shared. As you flip through these pages, I hope you feel the same joy that I felt on Christmas Eve, one of eight children mesmerized by the adventures of a cowboy named Slats.

by MARCY NATHAN EDITOR’S LETTER

e all have our own way of celebrating the holi- days. For my mother, it was never too early to get a Christmas tree (or too late to take it down; ours W usually lasted past Mardi Gras). Despite my sister Courtney’s arguments for a flocked one, Mom insisted on getting a fresh Frasier fir — the tallest one on the lot. My father, though big in stature, lacked in height, and thus needed a ladder to string the lights and place ornaments where my three sisters and I couldn’t reach. When the tree was as stuffed as a turduchen, our neighbor, Bob Pettit — yes, that Bob Pettit, the basketball star — would come over to place the star on top. Bob was so tall he had to bend over to come in the front door, so he was well-suited to this task. The tree and Christmas decorations — particularly this one giant, light-up plastic Santa who sat by the fireplace — made it feel like Christmas, but it wasn’t until my maternal grandparents from Alexandria arrived that I knew it was Christmas. Their car would come up the gravel driveway, the back seat filled every year with sacks of pecans from our camp on the Cane River, my grandmother Sophie holding pies — chocolate and coconut — from Lea’s Lunchroom in Lecompte, a 20-minute drive away (but only 15 if my grandfather — Barney Oldfield, he called himself when he got behind the wheel — was driving). Christmas Eve always kicked off with cocktail hour before dinner with my grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. My dad’s Uncle Herbert could never wait for the meal. Instead of joining everyone in the living room, he’d poke around the kitchen. Clara, our nanny who helped raise me, once stopped him mid-fork as he was about to take another bite from a plate of cat food he’d confiscated from the refrigerator thinking it was her famous chopped liver.

9 everyday NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

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