Technically, I don’t write on holidays. But there haven’t been many since I started here the week after Easter of this year, and, well, I write on holidays anyway. If only to send out a thank-you for subscribing and reading.

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The title here refers to a little conversation my dad and I were having the other day. He recalls holiday gatherings back in Brooklyn, with his Italian-American extended family, that were boisterous and pleasantly contentious. Lots of good-natured teasing, ribbing, storytelling. Lots of treats—Italian pastries, prosciutto, baked ziti, wine, etc. The fact that way too many people were crowded into a little pre-war Brooklyn apartment was just part of what made it what it was. It seems like these memories are etched into people’s minds forever, and that makes me think about whether we’re still making those memories today. I try to do that in my home.

I wrote something along these lines back in 2018, around the time I felt I had become old enough to look back at my childhood as a different time, with a little bit of perspective. I wrote in praise of small homes with janky rooms under the stairs, semi-finished basements, and little nooks and crannies, and what it’s like to be a child growing up in that setting:

Among my most pleasant childhood memories are “rosary nights”: a group of us homeschooling Catholic families would meet at someone’s house every 13th of the month (it had something to do with Fatima), and pray one, sometimes three, rosaries. Occasionally we would display a large statue of the Virgin Mary, which came in an equally large bag and which one family’s cat liked to treat as an enclosed bed. When the praying was over, we would retire to the kitchen for cakes and desserts. The kids would eat quickly and fit in as much unsupervised playtime as we could—even more exciting if we were in an unfamiliar house—before it was time to go home.

What all of this has to do with housing and urbanism is that in my child’s mind, the pleasantness of the houses and the company of friends and the comfort of the Faith were inseparable.

I have feelings like this at every holiday gathering to this day. I love the crowds in my favored specialty shops—the Italian delis and pastry shops—and the sense that in many different ways, so many of us are doing the same thing, across cultures and even religions. I’m thankful for all of this.

I’ve got some other holiday-related ideas coming up here, but for now, I hope you’re enjoying your own gathering or dinner, wherever it finds you, and thank you again for being a reader here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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