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What Meatballs Have To Do With It

December 23, 2020 By Cam Miller 10 Comments

How to make meatballs round is a deep, philosophical question? Wegmans does it but make them at home and isn’t one side always a little flat? Turn them often of course, but still one side of that humble sphere loses air.

You might wonder what this has to do with Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, Epiphany, or any other dark-season festival. I am not Italian and my own family Christmas celebrations have never included meatballs, so what gives?

Perhaps the answer is is like the musical “Cats.” I have long speculated that Cats had its origin at a late night party after too much drinking, with Andrew Lloyd Weber bragging he could write a successful musical about anything. Someone then challenged him to use T. S. Eliot’s peculiar poetry collection, “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Then again, it may be that the meatball is actually a penetrating question with serious social implications.

If your not a nonna, or didn’t grow up cooking with one, to make the perfect meatball is every bit as difficult as making a round, thin corn tortilla from scratch when you didn’t learn it at your mother’s or abuelita’s side. Some things that look so easy take generations to make and the knowledge of generations to keep alive.

Like cooking, like life.

Wisdom is a kind of knowing passed down through tradition rather that the content-instruction we get at school or from watching the Great British Baking Show. If we miss the infusion of wisdom as we grow, it is possible to garner it in later life but with more strain and less grace – like learning another language in adulthood.

An unrecognized yet beautiful and blessed dimension of the winter holidays mentioned above, is that they are generational bioms in which both tradition and wisdom are shared and passed on. The passage takes place without notice, often wordless even. The things we always do, repeated year after year in family rituals, each with an ethnic tinge, are also vessels of the whys and where-they-came-froms that reveal deeper wisdom underneath layers of tradition.

When we mate and become entangled with another family, we discover there are different traditions and, if we are trusted and fortunate, we get a glimpse of the wisdom within those differing rituals and customs. Then we understand – wisdom – that there is more than one way to do things, and as many reasons for doing them as there are customs. In other words, we grow.

What do we lose when we commercialize these holidays to the point they become rote consumer events? The unique traditions and ways of doing things become endangered, flattened into a glossy uniform image without a soul. Instead of making cookies, we buy them. Instead of making presents with the particularities of the person in mind, we order them. Instead of cooking with children or grandchildren at our side, we order out or find it pre-made. Instead of making our decorations together, we buy them.

What gets left behind in this one-size-fits-all commercializing of traditions is the flow of wisdom moving as if by osmosis from one generation to the next. And that is what meatballs have to do with it.

Filed Under: DENIM SPIRIT Tagged With: Like cooking like life, Meatballs, tradition

Comments

  1. Kate Harrington says

    December 24, 2020 at 8:04 am

    Hi, Cam,
    I haven’t been in touch with you for a while. I think it’s because I received a shock when I saw you on Easter a couple of years ago. The order of service has changed so much I hardly recognized it, and I had to take time off to get used to it. Now I’ve been watching (select) Christmas movies on TV, and have received a jolt of a different kind. The “Perfect Stranger” quadrilogy (is there such a word?) has moved me a lot, and I find myself longing for God. I have a Bible and a Book of Common Prayer – probably old style, but that’s all right, it’s what I grew up on – and I can make shift to try to have a conversation with Him on His birthday.
    Happy Christmas.
    Kate Harrington

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      December 24, 2020 at 9:53 am

      Good to hear from you, Kate. Not all Episcopal Churches are that different from what you remember. You could try St. Peter’s of St. John’s, Clifton Springs and you should feel right at home. Also, I know St. Peter’s is zooming worship and I think on FaceBook too. The Washington National Cathedral is doing some wonderful music and worship online that you would likely find just right. Happy Christmas to you too!

      Reply
  2. Jan A says

    December 24, 2020 at 9:29 am

    The wisdom of the elders is being drawn down through this pandemic. Many will be unable to learn to make those meatballs when it’s all said and done. Get that wisdom while you can.

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      December 24, 2020 at 9:50 am

      Yeah, there’s a sale on!

      Reply
  3. Bing Sherrill says

    December 24, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    Hi Cam,
    Sometimes rituals and customs get a bad rap, but they are a far more positive guide than rules and requirements. If wearing a mask were a ritual rather than a rule, more of us may be alive.
    Bing

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      December 24, 2020 at 8:40 pm

      Masking is a perfect metaphor, thanks Bing!

      Reply
  4. Edwin Beck says

    December 24, 2020 at 2:01 pm

    Hi there, Cam. Once my friend Tom gave up his WaPo cartoon, I fear my writing days have gone “hiatus bound.” Commenting on his dailies kept me thinking more critically than deciding: “Jeeez, what’s for lunch?” (Although Mary’s soups are nothing to snort at – despite the runny nose, always included.) Anyway, speaking of writing (weren’t we?) I do like to contribute something written as a Christmas card inclusion. I guess that might be my tradition. (One year I was treated to a wonderful letter from Russell Baker, appreciating a piece I had written about my in-laws return home to “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” after breakfast and grandchildren at our place.) This year’s “contribution” was written by my mother-in-law, Adelaide Dawson Lancaster; I will send it to you as an e-mail – unless I forget, which is happening more-oftten-than-not. Best wishes, amigo. (e2b2)

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      December 24, 2020 at 8:41 pm

      I look forward to reading it! Merry Christmas!

      Reply
  5. Bing Sherrill says

    December 24, 2020 at 10:40 pm

    Hi Cam,
    Seems that rituals and customs get a bad rap, frequently blamed in the “I am spiritual not religious.” approach. Mask wearing based upon ritual and custom rather than rule and requirement might have save many lives.
    Bing

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      December 25, 2020 at 9:58 pm

      Great comparison between masks and ritual/custom!

      Reply

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Each of these posts appeared first in The Finger Lakes Times (NY) as an entry in the weekly series, “Denim Spirit.”

 

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