Traditions

By Bill Melonides

December 21, 2023

Families, like most cultures, are held together and often defined by their customs and traditions. Traditions can be ethnically, regionally or circumstantially based. Mine is no different. For example, my great-aunt Bess would save the two packets of sugar that came with her coffee each day at work. She’d put them in her purse and collect them in a bag in her pantry. Periodically she’d bring the nearly five-pound bag to my mom, and we’d sit together at the kitchen table. opening and emptying them into the sugar canister.

I’d watch in fascination and once I asked her, “Thea, we have plenty of sugar, why do you do this?” and she replied back, “William, you never know when you may need it.” As a child of the depression, she lived through the rationing of two world wars. She did this until she retired. Saving sugar packets might sound a bit extreme or even like antiquated thinking in a modern world. Today if we need something, we just go to Amazon and it shows up at the door tomorrow, but we only have to look back as recently as the pandemic to recall how certain items became scarce. Most of us will forever look at toilet paper in much the same was as my great-Aunt Bess saw those sugar packets. The problem I’m finding is that all this technology that most of us have invited into our lives is driving out many of these important cultural and family traditions.

Traditions are the sinews that hold a family’s skeleton together. They are a common event or act that we collectively embrace. Traditions function as the institutional knowledge of our lives and if they’re not passed on to our posterity, then we’ll be doomed to become homogonous beings wandering around in the Twitterverse, or worse, driven to action by the latest Tik Tok. Our traditions often get lost in the shuffle while we’re not looking. But there are others that get overtly shoved under the rug such as the renaming of already famous places like the Sears Tower, Rosemont Horizon, Comiskey Park and countless other bits of our culture that gets sold off for a price.

Many traditions are easy to continue. The ones that require effort are harder to keep up and usually require an emotional buy-in. As far back as I can remember each year on (Greek) Palm Sunday, we’d go back to my γιαγιά’s apartment after church and she would prepare an early dinner of pan-fried bakalao (dried cod) and artichokes a’la Politika (braised artichokes “of the City,” meaning Constantinople).

Afterwards, we’d watch “The Ten Commandments” on channel 7. We did this each year until my grandparents moved to a smaller apartment, then my mom made the conscious choice to host the dinner. After several years the preparations became more difficult for her to do alone and rather than omitting the artichokes (a labor-intensive dish), I insisted that she show me how to make the artichokes so she wouldn’t have to. Eventually my brother and I each learned how to make all the dishes, either from our γιαγιά or from my mom and we each excelled at those we prepared. The tradition moved over to our houses after my mom died with me hosting one year, then my brother Steve took over and he hosted each year until the pandemic hit. In 2021, as many of you know, Steve left Chicago and moved to Florida. It had been a great and lasting tradition. Sadly, now we’re separated by such great distance that it doesn’t happen.

It isn’t only family traditions that fade. So many things in our culture have either disappeared or have been cancelled. In Chicago alone we’ve lost so many gems, The Swedish Bakery in Andersonville, famous for its marzipan pastries, closed several years ago because the owners were retiring with no one to take over the business. The same happened last year to La Petitie bakery on 63rd and Central. My great-uncle Nick would stop there and get a “rainbow” cake (AKA atomic cake) every time he visited us. The cake is still available elsewhere but he/we always got it from La Petite. Greek Town has shrunken down to only a handful of spots. Restaurants in the city and burbs have closed by the dozens during and following the pandemic, many of note.

I moved out of the city myself in 2005 for the western suburbs. When my oldest started kindergarten we joined the Indian Guides & Princesses program. After only three years into the program, a program that is steeped in tradition going back nearly 100 years, a program prioritizing dad’s spending special time with their kids…its future was threatened. Somebody in a neighboring town got a burr in their saddle blanket about using the term “Indian” in the name of the program.

They made a big stink and pressured the YMCA into forcing an ultimatum on the program to change the name or leave the “Y.” The executive committee of our local Indian Guides & Princesses Federation voted to keep the name, leave the umbrella of the YMCA and strike out on our own beginning the following year. There was already a precedent for this as many other IGP Federations in the area and around the country had met similar objections.

Going forward all annual membership dues and administrative fees were paid to the newly created organization and no longer to the YMCA. Not long after a letter came in the mail with an urgent plea from the local YMCA for donations. It seemed that they were falling short of their annual fundraising goals.

I wrote back suggesting that the shortfall should have come as no surprise given their decision to expel our organization from their ranks, a move costing them all those family membership dues. I advised them that they might seek out the individual who had forced the ultimatum and ask them to help fund their financial shortfall. I received no response. Back while I was still living at home my dad started many of his own traditions. You may have read about our annual Octoberfest last September. Similarly, each year on June 6th he’d have me pop “The Longest Day” into the VCR, on Memorial Day, he’d want to watch “The Great Escape” or “Mr. Roberts.” On December 7th it was always “Tora, Tora, Tora” and on Veteran’s Day one of his favorite movies, not because of the plot or the acting, but because it featured the
plane on which he served as crew-chief in the Navy, “The Bridges At Toko-Ri”.

These simple traditions were easy to keep up. My girls have been good sports to a degree and will sometimes sit with me as I honor my dad’s memory and watch his favorite movies on those special days, which brings to mind another tradition.

One that I started, and one that would have been right out of my mom’s playbook. In 2014 I read on Facebook about a fun event at the Music Box Theater. The following year I took my oldest to see “The Sound of Music” sing-along. This was so much fun and a huge hit and instantly became a yearly tradition that soon my aunt joined, and then my wife too. We continued it every year until the pandemic. We went one more time in 2021, but now my girls think they’re too old (cool) for it.

I’m not exactly sure how it began but one of our family’s longest standing traditions started well before I was born. Each year after Thanksgiving, we would pile into my dad’s station wagon and drive for what felt like an eternity from the far north side of Chicago out to Aurora. We were headed to a Christmas tree farm at Marmion Abbey, a Benedictine community founded in 1933. We’d walk through the rows of pines looking for the perfect tree.

Often the farm was blanketed in snow and we’d bring our sleds, other years we were met with mud and slop, but the worst was when it was windy and frigid and all we wanted to do was cut down our tree and get back to the car. Once we’d tied down our trees we’d stop at the checkout hut to pay and for my mom to buy wreaths. There was a priest who was in charge of the tree farm, Rev. Bede Stocker. I later learned was a certified arborist. Somehow my mom knew him, perhaps through her group of Swedish friends from Lakeview High School or from the neighborhood where she grew up. If Father Bede wasn’t in the checkout hut, the staff would always track him down so that my folks could say hello and thank him for his hard work.

As we grew older, got married, had children…the tradition grew to include a nice lunch afterwards. The tradition continued even after my mom died. We’d all meet at the tree farm, pick our trees and head for lunch. I came to find out that Father Bede who was 89 when my mom passed had slowed down significantly by the ought’s eventually passing away in 2010.

The farm continues to operate with a new arborist and has really grown in the last 20 years. Once my nephews started college the tradition of going as a group officially ended. Though we all still go out there, each family now goes solo. During this festive time of year, our busy lives are filled with traditions, both cultural and familial. It’s important to hold onto those traditions and nurture them so that we can endear them to the future generations that they might continue. What I’ve come to discover after more than 50 years is that the traditions themselves aren’t the really important part. The key is that they bring us together as a community or as a culture or most importantly as a family. May God bless you during this holiday season and may all of your traditions continue to flourish and grow.

-30-

Bill is a professional photographer and self trained chef. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Chicago’s western suburbs where he is active in his church and a leader in his daughter’s Scout troop.

Comments 20

  2. We raised our family in Geneva, moving from Mr. Stathos’ six flat on Lake Street when #1 daughter joined #1 son. Thanksgiving was always at my parent’s home in River Forest, my Dad’s brothers and their families filling the big stucco four square. Uncle Gene and I irritated my Dad with our annual “largest plate of food” contest. My kids still remember the 30 mile drives to and from the family feast. #1 son was thrilled when he was old enough, fast enough to join in the morning game of “touch” at the House of Studies on Division. Nothing unique about this “tradition” nor the very similar, if not shorter Christmas trip to Marmion for our tree, where so many of our new friends had attended. Sinews, yes! Tying lives together through time…. Thanks for another great, inspiring column.
    Hansen

  3. If there is a silver lining in the 2020 lockdowns it is made people focus on what the most important things in life are your family and friends. My wife and I started the tradition of going to Capauls Christmas Tree Farm in Waunakee WI cutting our tree every year in snow or mud with the dog in tow. We took turns of who got to pick the tree and do the sawing. Dragging the tree back to the tree shaker, feeding carrots to the two reindeer, having hot cider, and paying Joe Capaul dressed in a red jacket with his grey beard. Joe calls me to work on his garage doors and the man always has a smile. He told me how he started the farm how the irrigation system works and how they use machetes to trim the trees for the perfect shape and because of the cost of farmland no one would be able to start a tree farm today in our area. The kids are grown now but will be here soon and we’ll make some new memories and try to hold on to the old traditions and memories as hard as we can.
    Merry Christmas

  4. No offense — and the culprit might be rogue Spellcheck — but I think the writer meant “endow” the traditions to the future generations, who no doubt will find them endearing, and one hopes, enduring.

  5. Great column, Bill! I sometimes say to my Greek buddy at work how lucky we are to be Mediterranean and have such old school relatives to have as ancestors who instilled in us faith, family and food. Being Italian on both sides, I can truly appreciate your memories! Merry Christmas!

  6. My late mother would have appreciated your Aunt Bess. At dinner times we each received only one-half of a paper napkin, though she said she’d give us another half if we needed it. And on the rare day we made a pilgrimage to Dove Candies & Ice Cream (big treat!) for milkshakes we were instructed to request “lots of” whipped cream, rather than “extra,” which cost extra.

  9. Excellent column, and thanks for sharing. Family traditions are so important in keeping us together. Sadly, it seems there are fewer and fewer American families who keep them alive after the death of the patriarch/matriarch has passed on.

  10. Basili,
    Your essay of life certainly jarred some memories loose of our own family traditions, similar to yours, as we Greeks seem to share some common genes! Of course Christmas day began with the early opening of gifts between my 3 sisters and I, and then off to St. Connies on Stony Island for services.
    After a week of Mom baking for the holidays, we couldn’t wait to savor her baklava, koulourakia, kourambiethes, and karidopita – after a sumptous feast at my Uncle John’s palatial home on 68th and Euclid. All the cousins and assorted “riff raff” as UJ called them were in attendance, as they dined on ham, turkey, beef tenderloin, pilafi, salads and veggies galore. Mom’s desserts were devoured once everyone had “digested” the meal. We bought our Xmas tree from a lot along 71st and Constance, schlepping it home on top of Dad’s 1951 Buick. Growing up in South Shore, ours was the only Xmas tree on the block, surrounded by all my Jewish friends and their families. Although, one of them, Bobby, still remembers the aromas wafting through our home when we’d get together. He has fond memories of Mom’s koulourakia! Even though it was a two-flat, it was home, thanks to Mom and Dad’s efforts to make it so. My best to your family, and hope to see again along the way. Kala Xristougenna, and Xronia Polla for your namesday next month!! Kai tou xronou!!

  11. Great essay, thank you! I was blessed to marry a second time and my wife has two sons who come from a 100% Greek family. Unfortunately that have exactly zero contact with their father. It was not a pleasant separation for their Mom and Dad. So I tell them I can be as much of a father figure to them as they may desire, but I will never be more than a place holder as I pray, especially this time of year, that they re-unite with their Dad and I will remain committed to this for the rest of my life.

  12. Thanks, Bill.

    I remember the Swedish Bakery from when it was Lindahl’s, and then Nelson’s. When I was a kid, we lived in an apartment above those businesses. The ovens downstairs made it so warm and toasty in the Winter, so darned hot in the Summer.

  13. As Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof “Tradition”! Next time you go out to Marmion, stop in at Harner’s Bakery in North Aurora. They have the best biscuits and gravy in these United States. This is according to my friends that played football at Iowa, and in the pros. They were lineman. Sampled them everywhere.

  14. Being Jewish my Christmas memories are different.
    Sherman and Sons Mens Clothing was open Christmas day on the corner of Maxwell and Halsted
    I remember we parked the car under the expressway and walked the long block to open the store around 7:A.M.
    It was cold.
    The snow and slush on the ground had my feet wet by the time we finished our walk.
    ‘The Hawk’ sliced through my coat as if it wasn’t there.
    There was the smell of polish sausages and fried onions from the stand across the street
    And the blind man playing ‘old john henry’ on his steel guitar
    I hated all of it at the time.
    Now I miss it terribly
    Thanks John for all you do

  15. My parents and their friends established their own Greek village of friends and family that all lived within (mostly) a few miles of each other on the north side, Lincolnwood and Skokie. Families would rotate holidays throughout the year except for us. We always got New Year’s Eve because Jan. 1 was my father’s name day. 40 people in a 1200 ft. split level and still room to dance Greek. After the ball fell, the poker table would be rolled out and the men would play until noon the next day, filling the rec room with smoke thick enough to put a fine patina on the little statues we brought back as souvenirs from Greece. It lasted for 25 years until the children of the village had their own children and none of us had a large enough house to host everyone for the holidays.

  16. Regarding the Indian Guides and Princesses, it’s funny how so many organizations cave to the woke Nancy’s with “burrs under their saddles” and then end up wondering what happened to all their patrons. Bud Light found this out the hard way. The mainstream media STILL doesn’t get it, and their subscriber and viewer numbers clearly prove it. Go woke, go broke.

  17. Mr. Bill Melonides: In your column you said you received no response from YMCA for your suggestion. Well that’s the way it has been with all charitable and public organizations who send out unsolicited mail asking for $$ donations, these days. The fact is that they are all funded by some big corporations to start with to meet their goals. Then the funds solicited my mail to the individuals go towards “fund raising” which is essentially to pay for the employees in that department. Usually they ask for donations to feed the hungry and homeless, especially during the holiday times with so many meal tickets. The money sent go towards the holiday bonus of the employees in the out fit. And that’s why they send out their mails from one address and provide you with a return envelope to be mailed to a PO Box or to Washington D.C., or Topika, Kansas City. The employees a these locations are trained to open the envelopes they receive, retrieve only the Checks and throw away the rest in a waste basket. Period. They don’t care what you write or other contents.
    When i wrote a suggestion to YMCA, I got an auto-generated response back telling my request is under consideration and I will be notified as soon as a decision is made. And that’s about it!

    And the same thing with political party machines. They will call you ” grass root leader” and stuff like that asking for $$. And, even you respond to their “from” address with your suggestions, there will be no one open you mail there. e.g., I received an email from the Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party asking for $$ towards fielding qualified candidates for the public offices and I responded to with an offer of a check for $1000, if he could find a Bernie Epton to run for mayor of Chicago noting that both Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson are the most disqualified candidates ever! And, of course I didn’t receive any response for my $1000 offer!

Leave a Reply