What is a favorite or traditional food that your family serves at Christmas? From childhood to this late age: a grand Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes with loads of gravy, rutabaga, banana bread, relishes, and milk... what a feast in our celebration..
What is the most memorable Christmas gift you received as a child? With my brother, we shared an American flyer train with two switch tracks, a station house and miniature trees. The train passed by our cowboy ranch... as an adult, he kept it... I didn't know that.
What kind of Christmas Tree do you prefer? I like real, but as a single person in an apartment, I had a fake 5 foot tall plant that I decorated with lights and my friends named it "the Hanukkah bush." I enjoyed all Jewish high holidays and ours, now preparing for Christmas.
What is your favorite Christmas Carol? Venite adoremus from " O come all ye Faithful ." I give it full measure, full voice, even if off key a bit....
What is a favorite Christmas memory from your childhood? Midnight vigil Mass, serving as first master, with 15 servers and three great priests, a choir that sang in multi parts, richly, before Mass, during, and after... it began at 10: 30 pm and ended near 12:30 AM, then home to hot chocolate and the best ever cookies.. Happy and tired, feeling that peace and joy were indeed all around..
What is your favorite Christmas movie? 1944, Paramount pictures with Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald in: “Going My Way." They still show it nearly every year and I get a box of tissues. That closing scene of Irish Fr. FItzgivens seeing his mother, brought from ' the ole sod' , in church on Christmas Eve Mass, gets me every time.