Remembering the

holiday traditions

At the beginning of the last century, immigrants who first came to South Bethlehem celebrated the Christmas holiday in the traditional manner of their native lands. As with so many ethnic groups, the holiday revolved around the dining room table with all members of the family. To achieve success in this holiday feast at home, each parent performed chores that balanced their workloads. During the 1920s and 30s, a husband who worked at Bethlehem Steel relied on his wife to care for their children, keep house and prepare the meals.

For this generation living in South Bethlehem before the Great Depression and beyond the post-WWII years, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners were prepared in the manner practiced by their ancestors. All the food needed for dinner was planned and purchased in advance.

On Christmas Eve, women frequented the Municipal Market at East Third and Adams streets for the bulk of dinner items. They purchased fruits and vegetables, dairy items, eggs, sugar, flour, poultry, seafood and meats. Since electric refrigerators with freezers were not yet popular or affordable, housewives depended on the icebox – and that meant food had to be purchased daily. Chickens were never frozen; they were chosen live and were butchered at any number of Southside chicken markets: Kaplan’s on East Third and Taylor streets, Hoffman’s at West Fourth and Buchanan streets or at the Municipal Market on East Third and Adams streets.

Christmas dinner was prepared early in the day. Many young Southside residents remember how their mothers rolled cookie dough on the kitchen table and made them with tin cookie-cutters. They decorated the cookies on cookie sheets and placed them into the hot coal-fired oven. Nothing compared to the smell of fresh baked cookies. Depending on which Southside ethnic group, these hand-made traditional pastries included apple strudel, Dobos torte, kiffles, nut tossies, poppy seed rolls, pizzelles, biscotti, strufoli, butter kuchen and even yeast-raised Moravian sugar cake.

While adult family members occupied their usual seats at the table, extra chairs were supplied to seat additional relatives. The father was always seated at the head of the table. Prayers of thanks at dinner were said prior to any food touching the lips of those seated.

Although the dining room was devoid of distractions like television and electronic devices, Christmas dinner was hardly eaten in silence. Conversation kept the table alive with chatter by family members who hadn’t seen each other for long periods of time and had taken the opportunity to share the latest events in their lives.

Eaten leisurely, Christmas dinner was a feast of flavors not experienced during other times of the year.

After dinner, women wearing aprons collected the plates and flatware and retreated to the kitchen. Here they held court with conversation and gossip while dishwashing by hand, while others in the room dried every glass, plate, flatware and pot, and put everything back in its respective cupboard, cabinet and drawer without evidence that a meal had even been prepared, except for the lingering aroma.

The dishwashing ritual ended with a scoured sink, followed by a pot of coffee placed on the stove range to perk, while cake, homemade pastries and desserts were arranged on platters covered with doilies for serving.

Back in the dining room, men recounted hunting and fishing triumphs and garden failures the previous summer while drinking beer or wine. They spoke of their jobs with conviction and bravado or recalled winning moments of their favorite football team at Taylor Stadium.

Breezing through blue-colored cigarette smoke from the men’s ashtrays, women returned to the dining room armed with cups, plates, coffee and dessert platters to still more personal stories and family secrets. While adults reminisced at the table, children busied themselves on the floor with games and remained quiet, so as not to miss one word of family folk tales.

Finally, small glasses were brought to the table accompanied by an assortment of bottled cordials, which included fruit brandy, port and sweet liqueurs.

Christmas festivities didn’t end there. It was relatively common for local Southside musicians to serenade their friends at home at Christmas and on New Years Eve, as Francis Figlear recalls:

“Music was the lifeblood of the Southside community because it was recreational and gave relief from the pain of the economic difficulties caused by the Depression and the gruesome war in the 1940s. My Dad, violinist Victor Figlear had two orchestras organized at the same time. His cousins, George and Frank Doddy also had their own orchestras; there were others, including Vincent Czipoth, Peter Heinrich, Ernie Pecsek and Joe Resetar.

“Late Christmas Eve was very special around our house, when the gypsies from New Jersey came with their musical instruments. My dad would take his violin and lead them serenading to family and friends all over Southside neighborhoods – and around the valley. They usually would arrive back at our house sometime later that night and dump all the tip money inside their bass fiddle onto the table!”

Back then, as now, Christmas festivities soon faded to memory. The anticipation of the long winter of sledding on snow-covered streets led to the hope of spring, and of course, another family holiday.

After six weeks of Lenten dishes, devoid of meat and sweets, Easter was welcomed with baskets filled with colored pysanky eggs, chocolates in the form of rabbits and crosses and edible marshmallow Peeps. And like Christmas, Easter offered another holiday dinner of food and table talk – all of which evolved around the family in those bygone days.