For me, the best festivals in New York are held at Italian churches –
the Giglio Festival in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn (July) and the festival of San Genarro in
Little Italy, Manhattan (September). By
far, the most exciting is the Giglio Festival which has been going on for
almost 130 years. The festival centers around a 72-foot statue
of Our Lady of Mount Carmel that rests on a four-ton steel frame (more about
this later).
I’m not Catholic, but this is the closest to an “Old New
York” festival that I can imagine and I went to it every year. First of all, an entire block of the street in
front of the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel gets blocked off and then lined
with booths selling all kinds of food and souvenirs. Songs by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett and Mario Lanza play all the time, except when a live band plays or during
the “parade” of the Giglio.
People who grew up in the neighborhood come from all over
for a reunion with their neighbors. In
talking to them, I get a sense of what this part of Williamsburg was like fifty
and sixty years before. I heard about
stickball games and who was a two-sewer hitter or even three-sewer hitter
(hitting the ball past 2 or 3 manhole covers – which were 90 feet apart). They talked about doo-wop street corner groups,
some talked about the Dodgers and the Giants, others about how safe and clean
it used to be. You feel a loyalty, a
sadness, a loss.
There’s a look to the people – a lot of the women have big
hair and tight clothes, the men wear square-hemmed shirts that are not tucked
in, and their hair is greased and combed back over their scalps. One year I was there, a man dressed in soft
yellow casual clothes stepped out of a black Mercedes. People gathered around him, the men shaking his
hand. He was important. Maybe a politician, maybe a community leader. I imagined him as the don of the mafia that
controlled that area. I didn’t ask. Why ruin a fantasy?
Every half hour, the statue is “paraded.” A priest and a full band climb onto
the steel frame. The priest gives a
blessing to the crowd. Then a host of
men surround the statue and pick up that four-ton frame on their shoulders to
sally it down the block, grunting
and straining. The first time I was at the festival was the first time I
heard someone say “Madon’ (a mild Italian curse that’s short for “Madonna”). The rest of the crowd cheers them on. The men parade the Giglio until they just
about collapse – maybe 25 feet or so. The
next half hour when it’s time to carry the statue, a new group of men jump in to do it.
The festival lasts for several days, and I totally recommend
going on the days or nights that the statue will be paraded.
For a large part of Brooklyn, Holy Cross Cemetery in East Flatbush was the primary resting place for many Brooklyn and greater NY area Catholic families from 1849 thru at least the 1980s, especially the Irish and Italians. Re: http://www.ccbklyn.org/our-cemeteries/holy-cross-cemetery/.
ReplyDeleteIn some plots, due to lack of burial options anywhere else, several generations of the same family would be interred, with the latest interment lying on top of the earlier ones. As I understand it, burials still occur this way, as there are no more unsold plots available. As long as a family owns a plot in the cemetery, it can add later generations to that same plot.
Some of the memorials and monuments are quite large and ornate, especially for some of the Italians. Many of the Italian names I saw when we visited and were searching for my wife's family plots last week were the same as some of the prominent NY mob leaders, although I didn't study them in any detail.
My wife grew up on a cul-de-sac street immediately adjoining the north side of the cemetery, and was telling me about their closest neighbors. 8 out of 10 were, by their surnames, Irish or Italian. She went to and graduated in 1966 from a local Catholic (all girls) high school, St. Brendan's, in south Brooklyn, which is still a Catholic school. At their 50th HS reunion, and in their HS yearbook, a huge preponderance of their maiden surnames were very obviously Irish and Italian, with a sprinkle of Slavic.
We visited her old street, and their local Catholic Parish church, and as you mentioned in one post, the current residents were largely black and primarily relatively recent emigrants from African nations. The current parish priest was from Ghana. Everyone we met and spoke with in the neighborhood was very friendly and helpful.
Ron Goodman, TJHS Class of '67.
Hi Ron, I only just now saw your comment. It's a wonderful comment and brought me to New York once again. Thank you so much for that! Did you enjoy your visit?
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