Your holiday hosting questions, answered

"I have a little Martha Stewart in me," says Gina DeMaio, 53, a real estate agent from Huntington who let that spirit fly last week at a holiday party at her home for 30 friends and colleagues. And while DeMaio may not have the same following as that famed lifestyle guru, she still has hosting tips and ideas to share.

Newsday tapped the know-how of local can-do holiday hosts to compile this Q&A explaining how Long Island is entertaining this season, including how to ease hosting stress, ideas for creative gift exchanging, and what to do about that darned Grinch — COVID-19.

What’s your top tip for a first-time host?

"Prepare early," advises Shirley Gadsden, 71, of Central Islip, who is hosting about eight family members on Christmas. "If I’m making lasagna, I make my sauce ahead and freeze that. If I make cookies or breads, I make them earlier and freeze them," Gadsden says. That saves her a lot of time and lets her focus on other tasks closer to the day of the party.

What are some ways you ease hosting stress?

"Get people to help," advises Doreen Page, 51, of Valley Stream, a paraprofessional in the New York City Department of Education who will be gathering with 16 extended family members for Christmas dinner. "How our family does it, the hostess doesn’t make everything. Our family is very organized. We have an Excel spreadsheet on a Google drive." Everyone plugs in what they plan to bring — entrees, appetizers, drinks or desserts. Page is Korean, so she plans to make Kalbi, which is Korean barbecued beef, and her husband, Derek, 55, a warehouse manager, is Jamaican, so he might make oxtail or Jamaican Curry Goat. Page’s sister-in-law, Janice Francis, 53, a sales force program manager from Medford who usually makes the macaroni and cheese, echoes Page. "Don’t try to do it all yourself," she says. A bonus to this group arrangement: "We always have too much food," Page says — so everybody also brings plastic containers and goes home with leftovers.

If you aren’t quite that organized, what do you tell people when they ask what they can bring?

"This year, I’m just requesting that they bring a bottle of wine," DeMaio, 53, said prior to her party. "Wine is always nice and easy, and with COVID, it’s a little safer." She made or ordered all the food to be served in individual cups — pasta salad in a cup, crudite in a cup, and individually wrapped pretzels from Duck Island Bread Company in Huntington, for instance. So, having guests bring wine instead of other foods ensured there was no need for shared serving trays and utensils. "You can never be too careful," she says.

Do you have any creative gift-exchange ideas?

At DeMaio’s party, each guest was asked to bring three wrapped copies of a favorite gift with a minimum value of $25. Each guest also put three pieces of paper with their names on it in a hat. One by one, they each pulled three names and gave those people one of their gifts. "It’s a twist on Oprah’s favorite things," DeMaio says. "I used to do a cookie swap party, but it was stressing my friends out." Nobody wanted to bake dozens of cookies, she says.

Is the omicron variant affecting your plans?

"On the whole, I’m nervous about it, but everyone is vaccinated and anyone eligible for a booster has it or is getting it. Everyone is pretty vigilant. We’re all on the same page as a family, so we feel confident," Page says of her family’s Christmas gathering. "I work in a school, so I wear a mask constantly."

Alyson Berman, 40, a lawyer from Massapequa who currently is home schooling her four children, ages 10, 8, 4 and 1, says she and her husband, Noam Bonkowski, 40, a teacher, hosted her extended family’s Hanukkah celebration on Dec. 5, the seventh afternoon of the holiday, outdoors even though the temperature was in the low 50s. "I typically do it indoors in the past," Berman says. "We figured it’s safer to do outside. Everyone kind of bundles up." She served bagels and lox and latkes, and matzo ball soup to keep everyone warm.

Are you taking any other precautions? How are you planning for unexpected cancellations of family members?

Maria Leftwich, 56, a teacher from Greenlawn, says her extended family — she has six siblings — has agreed to all do COVID tests the day before Christmas Eve. "You kind of have to. We have a lot of babies in the family and grandpa, who is in his late 80s," she says. Last year, the family canceled their Christmas Eve gathering altogether after the youngest sibling’s family came down with the virus at Thanksgiving. They’re hoping that with everybody vaccinated and grandpa just getting his booster, nobody has to bow out this year. Leftwich expects that 42 family members will be celebrating the traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes at her brother’s house in Greenlawn.

What are you doing to make the season bright for your children?

Jo-Anna Caputo, 41, an author from Massapequa, hosted a chocolate gingerbread house party for her daughter, Tabatha, 10, and four of Tabatha’s friends in mid-December. She purchased individual kits with individual icing and packets of decorations for $15 for each kit from Thems The Breaks Chocolate Shop on Facebook.

"Last year was so disjointed. We were just so scared," she says. This year, "We’re feeling more secure to start celebrating in smaller groups, to bring back the holiday spirit, especially for the kids. They’re only young once."

While she didn’t go so far as to ask if the other invited children are vaccinated — "that’s not a question I’ve asked the parents, I feel like that’s a personal question," she says — she does like that her dining room table is big enough for the small group to spread out and that there’s no community icing bowl, for instance. "Only your little hands are touching each item," she says. "Is it foolproof? No. But I have to do something this year. She’s 10."

By Beth Whitehouse

Special to NewsdayBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.