Tag Archives: Italian american

Ravioli Day

Text

“My family and I celebrate Ravioli Day every year during early December. It’s a family tradition passed down in our family for more than 100 years now. When it hits Decemeber my mom’s side of the family gathers at my grandparent’s house where we all bring ingredients for ravioli and cook as one family. This past year my family brought the cheese and my personal job was add the filling to the pasta dough that is rolled by my grandma, mom, and aunts. Sometimes when me or my cousins mess up the filling the ravioli explodes and it becomes a funny blame game to guess who did it. Everyone in the family helps whether its making the dough, rolling the dough, making the pasta shapes, making the filling, or making the sauce. Once we finish cooking everything we save it and enjoy it together for Christmas dinner.”

Context

“I never really found out about this tradition besides the fact that I have been doing it since I was a baby. My mom did tell me that it has been in the family for at least a hundred years and even she did not know when it started because she has been doing it since childhood as well. Ravioli day ties to our Italian culture and makes Christmas and the entire month of December unique to my family. I love to see all my relatives during December because they are all scattered throughout the US compared to my grandparents and I who live in California.”

Analysis

Traditions like these represent family customs that act as folklore because they are informally passed down through generations. As in this story, the folk group which is his entire family shares a common cultural identity of being Italian-American. The use of ravioli is a symbol of their ancestry due to the food’s origins and in that sense they are carrying on the legacy of their predecessors who created this tradition. This is called foodways because culture and memory is preserved through the sharing of food. Like him and his mother who learned about this tradition simply by habitually doing the tradition each year since birth, many of us don’t recognize the many things we do daily that are forms of folklore because it is so normal to us. From an outsider perspective, however, this family tradition is unheard of and is specific to their folk group.

Christmas struffoli (honey balls)

Age: 50s Hometown: Bronx, NY

Performance Context: I experienced this recipe and performance firsthand every December/ around Christmas time as the informant is my father. He comes from a large Puerto Rican and Italian-American family from the Bronx. His Italian family’s side are from Sicily and Naples.

Recipe/Description:

According to my father (the informant) – dough is hand mixed with orange zest and it cools a large gathering, usually the kids/cousins, roll the dough into strips called the ‘snakes’ of a certain thickness of a finger. The snakes are then chopped into squares which are then rolled by hand. They are then deep fried and left to cool in a pot of honey with a splash of sambuca as the secret ingredient. This is usually done in huge batches meant to be tinned and given to neighbors, friends, extended family, and people like doctors, teachers, dentists, etc.

The rolling technique along with the size of the balls are highly specified as the smaller the piece the crispy they end of getting fried. The informant states that nowadays their family (myself included) “does not create the proper sized dough pieces” and that back in the day the informants grandmother would make them “re-do entire batches of them if they weren’t up to standard” .

My father mentions there were a staple among his childhood and grew up sitting at a table rolling dough all day in the weeks leading up to Christmas. He remembers the act so vividly because his hands would start cramping and he would be so bored when the younger cousins would give up and leave the ‘rolling’ table.

Analysis:

This is a classic example of family/holiday foodways. The making of the Struffoli becomes a whole day and entire family affair. Once the day is decided to be dedicated to making honey balls, nobody can escape the kitchen. I think the fact that it’s such a labor intensive process, repetitive and boring, keeps the memory of this tradition so vivid. “It’s a very unique tradition”, even among other Italian-American traditions, according to my Father.

The specific snake rolling technique is a perfect piece of kinetic folklore, it’s a physical skill passed down through imitation, using the “thickness of a finger” as a marker. My father’s grandmother, and then his own, role in ensuring the quality shows how this specific tradition is policed and ensured to be passed down consistently generation to generation. The act of gifting the honey balls also serves as social currency, showing appreciation and love as well as signaling those in the community of their Italian heritage.

Plastic Covered Furniture

Text:

“Whenever new furniture was bought, they would immediately be covered in plastic”

Context:

In my dad’s Italian family, when new furniture was purchased and moved into the house, it was immediately encased in plastic. My mother had similar experiences at her Jewish friends’ homes.

Analysis:

The ritual of covering new furniture in plastic is a common, repeated & patterned practice found among Mediterranean immigrants. Many Mediterranean immigrants were fleeing poverty & crime, coming to America with next to nothing. Because of that, new things were a rare commodity. My dad only had hand-me-down clothes, shoes, anything until he was in high school and got his first NEW pair of sneakers. So, whenever something new was bought with hard-earned money, immigrant families wanted to keep it as new and clean as possible. It was a symbol of pride, success, and hard-work paying off, and immigrants wanted to preserve it.

Salad After Dinner

Text:

“We always ate salad after dinner”

Context:

My dad grew up in a large Italian-American family in New Jersey. Every night they would have family dinner. They would eat different meals depending on the day of the week: spaghetti on Sunday, leftovers on Wednesday, etc. However, one thing remained the same: when salad was eaten. Salad was always eaten after the main course. At school, my father would sometimes tell other kids that his family would eat salad after the meal, and the kids would make fun of him, not understanding why his family did that.

Analysis:

Eating salad after the main course is a very Italian tradition. It’s a ritual because it is a repeated and patterned act that followed every family dinner my father had. My dad believes they ate salad after dinner in order to promote digestive health with the fiber. After having spent time in Italy, I agree with my dad’s belief and add onto it saying that salad is eaten after dinner in order to not be full for the main course. The pasta, fish, or meat dishes in an Italian meal are considered the highlight. It is considered almost disrespectful to not finish the main course, so eating salad after the main course ensures that you remain hungry for the meal and don’t fill up on salad. With food being so innate and important in Italian culture, it makes sense that rituals such as this one exist surrounding dinner time.

Worker Chosen by Babe Ruth

Nationality: American

Occupation: Corporate Event Planner

Residence: New York, NY

Language: English

Text:

When Babe Ruth showed up for work, he didn’t look or act like a professional athlete. He ate way too much, drank way too much, and would often wake up with a different woman in his bed. When he was playing he was often hung over, which made it harder for him to deal with all of the attention he was getting as a superstar baseball player. Back in that day in the late 1920s, a bunch of kids would line up outside the stadium in hopes of being the bat boy, and the players would pick one and they’d get paid a nickel for the game. [My aunt’s] great-uncle lived in the Bronx, and after a few weeks of showing up at the stadium he finally got chosen to be the bat boy. He was always very quiet, which Babe Ruth loved; all the other bat boys would constantly try to talk to him which he found annoying. With him as bat boy, the Yankees went on a winning streak and went on to win the World Series. Because of his quiet nature, Babe Ruth gave [my aunt’s] grand-uncle the nickname “Silent Pete”, which stuck for the rest of his life. Eventually Pete became the full time equipment manager for the Yankees, and was with the team for 20 World Series titles.

Context:

The truth of this story is very difficult to measure. The nickname of Pete was given to him by the Yankees (although it is unclear if it was Babe Ruth himself), and he went by Pete his entire life instead of his real name of Michael. There is some proof that he was paid five cents per game to be the bat boy, and the reports of Babe Ruth showing up hungover were likely true. However, the part of the story where kids lined up outside the ballpark and the players personally would pick a bat boy is probably false; he held the bat boy job for almost a decade, which would not make sense if they were picked fresh each day, and it is unlikely that the incredibly famous players would choose the bat boy themselves. My aunt claims to have told me this story exactly as she heard it from her father, who claims he tells it exactly as he heard it from Pete Sheehy, but it is likely that they both enhanced elements of the story.

Analysis:

There are two main elements to this story in my opinion. The first is a simple, classic American rags-to-riches story, where Pete Sheehy was a poor young boy living in the Bronx during the great depression, and through hard work and a positive spirit he worked his way up the ranks of the Yankees organization and ended up as their equipment manager. This is very similar to the common stories of someone starting in the mailroom and working their way up to being the CEO of the company. The other main element to this story relates directly to my family. My family were at the time recent immigrants to America, and faced many of the hardships that recent immigrants face. This story was used to tie my family to Babe Ruth, an American legend, which was a way within my family of solidifying status as being “real Americans” when many other people would have discriminated against them as recent immigrants.