Food, smells, memories and a full house: Christmas at the grandparents’ house leaves marks for life

Victória Sales – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – To be able to spend the holidays, more precisely Christmas with your grandparents, is to be able to remember stories and feel welcome. As a tradition, going to the house of the hosts has become increasingly distant for some generations with people having less and less time, due to the greater amount of accumulated work. The CENARIUM reporting team talked to people who told stories about the power of celebrating the date next to their grandparents, surrounded by good stories, a crowded house, remarkable foods and smells.

For journalist Luís Oliveira, it was a family tradition to get together at Christmas time. At the house of his grandmother’s sister, Lindalva, and her husband José de Oliveira Rocha, for example, the cousins would arrive from Brasília and Goiânia and make the atmosphere joyful. The house was crowded with people. The trips to the mall and supermarket were practically every hour. The day was full of things to do. Everything was a party for him.

“I was always very attached to my grandmother, Rosanira Alves, and my mother Renata Oliveira. And at Christmas we always had a lot of parties. I think Christmas is the best time of the year. Maybe because of these family reunions that, during my childhood, were very important for the fact that all the family members were present and the house was surrounded by friends. I believe in the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, because my family taught me this and I had a Salesian education, but I also received many presents from everyone, because at that time I was the only child in the house, and so I looked forward to Christmas every year, like most children in the world”, he said.

Luís also reports that for some time now, after the cousins got married, grew up, and moved away, it has been noticed that these reunions have not been as complete as before, but they are still held with part of the family. “I saw some memes on the Internet recently, of a house, on a farm, in an old picture, full of people, and then, the same house empty and abandoned and in the caption it said: ‘I miss Christmases at Grandma’s house’ and I really stopped to think about it and remembered how important it is to celebrate today, while there is still time, because everything goes by too fast and then only memories remain”, she added.

Student Marcela Medeiros says that every year she spends Christmas at her paternal grandmother’s house and this has been a tradition in her life and in her family since she can remember. “We are at least 30 people between uncles, aunts, cousins and aggregates and we try very hard to create these memories, because nowadays, especially, we know more than ever that people are not eternal. So it’s very important to get together and every year we manage to turn Christmas into a big joke”, he narrated.

Grandparents: Bonding Links

Grandparents are the people who have many stories. The best thing is to stop, sit down, and listen, with all the attention in the world, to the stories. They tell of their childhood, adolescence. In addition, grandparents’ houses have a special smell. Be it a fresh cake, some spice, roses, some perfume.

According to sociologist Luiz Antonio, in all human societies, contemporary or historical, the elderly have always been fundamental in that they are a kind of link between the past and the present pointing to the future. “That’s why in all societies you will find social rituals, family or community rituals, where you have a meeting between young and old”, he explained.

Luiz Antonio also points out that in western society these rituals were quite common, as were christening parties, saint’s feasts, all these moments were times of transition meeting and transmission of sociocultural elements and principled values. “The harvest festivals are fundamental, not only as transmission of knowledge and cultural tradition by orality, but also by example”, he reported.

Asked about what these meetings can influence people’s lives, Luiz explains that there is a serious problem when families have lost much of their social fabric with the advent of a phase of capitalism that is mediated by individualism and consumerism, so there are young people and their parents increasingly distant from the elderly. “It has another important element that is the mortality rate among the elderly has dropped exponentially in the last 30 years, that is, they are surviving longer”, he pointed out.