from http://croatiagifts.safeshopper.com/261/1313.htm?130I'm a hunkie.
I live in Wyoming, but yet my Croatian roots from the good old melting pot of Pittsburgh aren't too far away. I say words like (spelled phonetically)"flooka" or "haluski" or "Jeshish, Maria" and most of the time even my husband asks me what the heck I just said.
Anyway, I volunteer to make a Christmas Party favor every year for my Grandmother's Croatian Group, Hrvaska Zene. I actually enjoy doing it. I can get my creative juices flowing and play with a glue gun until my hands are blistered. This year, though, is the last year for the club. According to my Gram she's the only active officer left and too many people are unable to come or are passed away. That's depressing. It's not just sad for her and her friends, but its the end of an era. See, my family's church was a Croatian ethnic church, and that was one of the groups that was founded there. Now it's like any memory of what "was" is going to be gone. Just a memory.
So, as a finale of sorts for the Christmas favor, I decided to incorporate a few things: it has to be something Christmas-y, something Croatian, and something that would bring about years of memories for the ladies. Easy task, right? Not so much.
After much searching on the internet for ideas of Croatian patterns, costumes, traditions, etc. I decided to make Licitarska Srca. They are "licitar hearts" that are a traditional cookie, sort of like gingerbread that is often used as a Christmas ornament rather than be eaten. One of the designs is to put a little mirror on the front of the cookie and then you give it to the one you love. When they look in the mirror- they see who you love. --- Well I thought it was perfect!
Many minutes (or hours, I donno) were lost from trying to figure out the supplies to make a "fake" cookie, but in the end I decided to make them out of sculpey. I pretty much ruined my rolling pin- as it is now bright red from rolling out red sculpey, but I now have a bunch of red hearts all over my kitchen table. I'm going to attempt to use puffy paint as the "icing" sooner or later- depending on when I feel brave enough.
Yes, I know it's only September, but I feel that making these little things is important both to me and to my Gram. I have got to get it right. Now, I have so many other projects at home to work on- too many to mention here without sounding like a total slacker. But yet I am so motivated to get my Gram's project done. Is it because she truly appreciates what I do? Maybe. Or is it that I so want to please her and impress her lady friends? Yeah sure. But I know I'm also doing it this year to have a bit of closure.
It's been almost 3 years now since St. Nick's locked its doors. My Mom isn't over it. My Gram tries to be over it but I know it still bothers her. And I feel that I moved away at such a time that I wasn't effected the way they were. This place was where I grew up pretty much. The place I also dreaded most of my adolescence and young adult years. But yet now I look back and see something different.
I feel like Linus in Charlie Brown Christmas when he puts his blanket around the little tree everyone made fun of and said "It really isn't such a bad little tree. All it needs is a little love." I feel like that when thinking of that little church.
I could go on and on about this. How my family's lives were changed. But it's not my reason for writing this entry. I'm writing about the significance of a little heart. And my Gram. I sometimes think about how she's not going to be around forever. So it's these times when we're working on a "project" together that I savor even though we're so far apart. I'm proud to be a hunkie. An Americanized, non-croatian speaking, ethnic-tradition keeping, palecenka-eating hunkie.
I live in Wyoming, but yet my Croatian roots from the good old melting pot of Pittsburgh aren't too far away. I say words like (spelled phonetically)"flooka" or "haluski" or "Jeshish, Maria" and most of the time even my husband asks me what the heck I just said.
Anyway, I volunteer to make a Christmas Party favor every year for my Grandmother's Croatian Group, Hrvaska Zene. I actually enjoy doing it. I can get my creative juices flowing and play with a glue gun until my hands are blistered. This year, though, is the last year for the club. According to my Gram she's the only active officer left and too many people are unable to come or are passed away. That's depressing. It's not just sad for her and her friends, but its the end of an era. See, my family's church was a Croatian ethnic church, and that was one of the groups that was founded there. Now it's like any memory of what "was" is going to be gone. Just a memory.
So, as a finale of sorts for the Christmas favor, I decided to incorporate a few things: it has to be something Christmas-y, something Croatian, and something that would bring about years of memories for the ladies. Easy task, right? Not so much.
After much searching on the internet for ideas of Croatian patterns, costumes, traditions, etc. I decided to make Licitarska Srca. They are "licitar hearts" that are a traditional cookie, sort of like gingerbread that is often used as a Christmas ornament rather than be eaten. One of the designs is to put a little mirror on the front of the cookie and then you give it to the one you love. When they look in the mirror- they see who you love. --- Well I thought it was perfect!
Many minutes (or hours, I donno) were lost from trying to figure out the supplies to make a "fake" cookie, but in the end I decided to make them out of sculpey. I pretty much ruined my rolling pin- as it is now bright red from rolling out red sculpey, but I now have a bunch of red hearts all over my kitchen table. I'm going to attempt to use puffy paint as the "icing" sooner or later- depending on when I feel brave enough.
Yes, I know it's only September, but I feel that making these little things is important both to me and to my Gram. I have got to get it right. Now, I have so many other projects at home to work on- too many to mention here without sounding like a total slacker. But yet I am so motivated to get my Gram's project done. Is it because she truly appreciates what I do? Maybe. Or is it that I so want to please her and impress her lady friends? Yeah sure. But I know I'm also doing it this year to have a bit of closure.
It's been almost 3 years now since St. Nick's locked its doors. My Mom isn't over it. My Gram tries to be over it but I know it still bothers her. And I feel that I moved away at such a time that I wasn't effected the way they were. This place was where I grew up pretty much. The place I also dreaded most of my adolescence and young adult years. But yet now I look back and see something different.
I feel like Linus in Charlie Brown Christmas when he puts his blanket around the little tree everyone made fun of and said "It really isn't such a bad little tree. All it needs is a little love." I feel like that when thinking of that little church.
I could go on and on about this. How my family's lives were changed. But it's not my reason for writing this entry. I'm writing about the significance of a little heart. And my Gram. I sometimes think about how she's not going to be around forever. So it's these times when we're working on a "project" together that I savor even though we're so far apart. I'm proud to be a hunkie. An Americanized, non-croatian speaking, ethnic-tradition keeping, palecenka-eating hunkie.
2 comments:
I went to Pittsburgh last saturday and we drove past the church. I don't really want to tell you what it looks like. The parking lot is overgrown and broken in places. No one has defaced it but it's obvious it isn't used. The grotto (if that's what it's really called) with Mary in it is still there watching over route 28.
It's so sad that traditions aren't as strong as they used to be. What can even be done to create them? There's got to be something at the core of the way we live our lives (and teach our children to live their lives) that makes it so that tradition becomes a fairy tale.
It even makes me sad that we don't go to church on Christmas, even though I'm the only Catholic in the family. How did the Licitarska Srca turn out?
Don't worry. Mary's not in the grotto anymore to see what's happening. She's gone, just like all of the other religious things. They desanctified the place. They painted over the murals, so not even "God" can look at what is happening. Makes me sick.
Everything was taken out of there. The lector's pulpit thing, and the Easter "tomb" for example, was taken out and, as if to add salt to the wound, was given to my Mom's new church. They said to her-aren't you happy about having it here? She' said no- how could she be? It's so painful to see it.
The Srcas are almost done. I've been working on them off and on- now I'm spray painting them with a glossy coat. Makes 'em stronger and prettier. :)
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