The man who put the merry in Christmas

I was in my 20s before I participated in a Christmas celebration for the first time in my life. The reason is simple. I'm Jewish. 

I grew up observing the major Jewish holidays. Come December, our family celebrated Hanukkah. We lit candles, recited prayers and spun the dreidel. 

But in 1979 my life changed forever. I married an Italian-American woman from Brooklyn, Elvira, who was raised Catholic. Every Dec. 25, we drove with her mother, Antoinette, from Forest Hills, Queens, along the Long Island Expressway to a house in Bethpage. There, I met our host for Christmas, Nick Chirichella, my mother-in-law's brother. I soon came to call him Uncle Nick. 

We celebrated Christmas year after year in Bethpage with Uncle Nick, his wife, three sons and daughter. We feasted in the downstairs den, festooned with colored lights, in the afternoon and then at night. Out to the table came bowls of salad doused in olive oil, pasta fagioli and beef braciola in tomato sauce. Classic Christmas songs, such as Dean Martin’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," played for hours. 

Nick reveled in playing master of ceremonies. He felt it was his job to make sure all guests -- his two sisters, nieces and nephews, and the neighbors who popped in unannounced -- had fun. He sang and danced and bellowed with laughter. It was always a loud, boisterous affair, everyone talking all at once. 

Nick's exuberant hospitality extended equally to me. If he cared that I was Jewish, I never saw a sign of it. He could tell I loved his niece, and she loved me. That's all that mattered to him. I immediately became family.   

It was all new to me, crossing into this culture. In my family, we kept our celebrations low-key. We had little laughter and certainly no dancing. We chanted our prayers in Hebrew and decorously consumed our latkes. 

Over the years, I learned a little about Nick's background. As a teenager, he was good enough to be granted a baseball tryout at the Polo Grounds with the New York Giants. He joined a union as an elevator repairman and, the story goes, one day an elevator slid down the shaft onto his back, but he was so strong he held up the compartment on his shoulders until his fellow workers could help him get out from under it.  

More than 20 years ago, with his wife, Marilyn, at his side, Uncle Nick died of a heart attack while on a trip to Atlantic City. He was only 65.  

To this day, especially around late December, I miss him dearly. Nick was drunk on life and never failed to put the merry in Christmas. All he needed to make him happy any day of the year was his family surrounding him. Everyone loved him. 

All these decades later, I still half-expect us to head out to his quarter-acre in Bethpage and see him beam at our arrival and feel his massive hand warmly clasp mine in greeting. He made a Jewish boy born in the Bronx feel welcome at Christmas on Long Island. He offered proof that cultures can come together rather than clash. 

His real name was Nicholas. He never actually came down a chimney, but to me he’ll always be Saint Nick.

Reader Bob Brody, formerly of Forest Hills, now lives in Martina Franca, Italy.