We come to a time of balance today with the arrival in the Northern Hemisphere of the spring equinox. The time of equinox balance tonight is 5:58 PM, Eastern Daylight Time. We are halfway now between the shortest day of the year (Midwinter in December) and the longest day (Midsummer in June). The sun rises pretty much due east, no matter where you are located on the globe, and sets pretty much due west. All is equal for a brief time and then the number of daylight hours begins to overtake nighttime hours in the North, as we head toward summer. And what is gained in the North is taken away in the South; there, winter is approaching, and there, this day brings the autumn equinox. It is a constantly changing beautiful balance, the balance of our planet spinning on its tilted axis as it orbits the sun.
Sunset on this first day of spring will also bring Purim, a holiday in the Jewish calendar marked by costumes, noisemakers called graggers, and delicious hamantashen, triangular shaped pastries filled with things like poppy seeds or prune or cinnamon and walnuts.
As for Seth and me, we are bringing in this springtide on a ship in the Western Caribbean. We are two people who do not like large crowds, and we have learnt to walk certain decks and to be in certain places at certain times so that it almost seems like there are not an additional 3,998 people sailing with us. The sea air is wonderful. Neither of us is seasick, but as we walk the deck, lifting one foot up before the other, we sometimes have to think long and hard about where to put that foot once it’s up above the ground. As it would happen, balance is foremost on our minds this equinox day, and maybe that is just right.
Image: An illustration for a book of science by Sebastian Münster, 1600. [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
The Finns have had their St. Urho’s Day and the Irish their St. Patrick’s Day, and now it’s the Italians’ turn, for it is St. Joseph’s Day––the Festa of San Giuseppe. In a land where so many of the vast multitude of saints are held dear and daily called upon and spoken to like members of the family, Joseph is one of the most beloved. Joseph, foster father to Gesù Bambino. In Italy, it is Father’s Day.
Those who are devoted to San Giuseppe may build an altar in their homes. Grandma Cutrone would do this. The parish priest would come to her home and bless the altar. Beneath the statue of St. Joseph, baskets of oranges. On the feast day, today, friends and neighbors would stop by and bring gifts to the altar and when they left, Grandma would send them home with an orange and a box of animal crackers.
What is central to our celebration, though, are Zeppole. They make their appearance in Italian bakeries at this time of year, especially today. In the more popular bakeries, you might find rolling racks full of trays of them behind the counter; they’ll be making so many of them, they won’t possibly fit them all inside the display case.
Zeppole are pastries of fried or baked dough, generous in size, each typically something you could fit into two open hands. They are filled with custard and often include a few cherries on top. There are also sfinci, related to zeppole, but filled with sweetened ricotta cream, perhaps with a few small chocolate chips, very much like a cannoli filling. Variations of these sweets, in name and in shape and ingredients, exist throughout Italy for the feast of San Giuseppe, but it is in the South, from where my family hails, that they are best known. Both sfinci and zeppole are pastries with histories that go back many centuries, with names that come out of the Arabic influence on the region. How far back do they go? The ancient Romans made fried pastries each year on the 17th of March in honor of Bacchus, and it is thought that the zeppole and sfinci we make today are direct descendants of those long ago sweets of springtime.
This St. Joseph’s Day, Lent has barely just begun. Usually, when Lent begins in February, it is St. Joseph’s Day that provides a day to step away from weeks of the season’s otherwise somber restraint to enjoy rich and festive pastries. If you’ve given up sweets for Lent, it can be a tough choice, whether to celebrate St. Joseph’s Day with zeppole or not. But, my friends, it is but one day a year, and for my people, these pastries are perhaps the highlight of the entire month of March. If you celebrate––and you know I hope you do––do so knowing you have an entire nation behind you.
I have a distant cousin out on the distant Great Plains whose company I enjoy but who I’m sure would not be surprised to read, should he read this Book of Days, that I don’t see eye to eye with on many matters. He likes walls where I do not, he sees good leadership where I am appalled daily, and he can be quite vocal about these things on Facebook––which is a large part of what has pushed me away from what, years ago, was a fun way to pass some time each day, keeping in touch with family and old friends. I view Facebook as more a business obligation these days, not an enjoyment. And so I don’t spend much time there. But occasionally I do see his posts, like the one just the other day about immigrants to this country needing to conform their ways to our ways (whatever our ways are). Again, we have different views here. If his grandparents (all immigrants from Italy, like mine) had followed their grandson’s rules, we wouldn’t be celebrating the Feast of San Giuseppe (St. Joseph’s Day) on the 19th of this month. Even our celebration of St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th would be doubtful. And certainly no one would be celebrating St. Urho’s Day today on the 16th of March.
I love our cultural differences and I love learning from people of other cultures and I love celebrating with them. I think of Rose, who cares for my pal Mike like he was her own family. She makes pumpkin soup for New Year’s, a tradition she brought from her Haitian homeland; now Mike eats pumpkin soup on New Year’s too. She just got her green card last week; she’s so happy about it. And I think of Tari, from Pakistan, who has a small restaurant downtown, open only for breakfast and lunch. In some of my lowest days, I’d go there for breakfast, and Tari would lift me up with her kindness and send me home with dinner, too. And today, on the 16th, I will be celebrating St. Urho’s Day with all the folks around these parts who emigrated here from Finland. Between Lake Worth and our neighboring city of Lantana, we have more Finns than anywhere save Finland, and it is from one of those Finns that I learnt the story of St. Urho, whose day is celebrated every March 16 with the wearing of the purple and the green. St. Urho, known no where else but amongst Finns, is celebrated for saving the vineyards of Finland by driving the grasshoppers from them. His simple incantation in Finnish, Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen (“Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to Hell”), is what drove those grasshoppers out of Finland and what saved the grape harvest and thus the wine (which also happens to be a big part of the day).
What’s that? You’re not familiar with the wines of Finland? Or with Finland’s historic grasshopper problems? Or with St. Urho himself? This is understandable; the fact is it’s all a fictional legend. And truth be told, it may have something to do with a healthy competition with the saint we’ll remember the next day who drove the snakes from Ireland and who we celebrate with the wearing of the green… but this is what the Finns brought us: St. Urho. And a fascinating language that is like no other, and Jean Sibelius, and korvapuusti––the delicious spiral buns flavored with cinnamon and cardamom that we buy at our local Finnish bakery, where the tall old Finns gather each morning to drink coffee and converse in their strange tongue. Some of them will remember today and maybe listen to recordings of the music of Viola Turpeinen Syralia, the legendary Finnish American accordionist who lived here in Lake Worth in the 1950s. She called her house “the Home that Polka Built,” and if you watch the video below, you’ll see eventually a photo of Viola outside her Lake Worth home while you listen to one of her ethereal accordion songs.
Were the old timers of Lake Worth nervous about all the Finns moving into their neighborhoods back then? Who knows. All I know is I love stories and I am not so fond of the isolation that walls create. Me, I’m more inclined toward bridges, knowing it is these bridges between cultures that allow me to love Viola’s music today for St. Urho’s Day and to enjoy Irish soda bread tomorrow for St. Patrick’s Day and on Tuesday, for St. Joseph’s Day, I’ll hope you’ll find some zeppole with which to celebrate… for that is one of my Italian heritage’s contributions to our great American culture, one of the bridges that bring us all together.
“Ellin Polka” by Lake Worth resident Viola Turpeinen Syralia. The photo at the opening is of Viola, early in her career, 1928. She was the first famous female accordionist in the States, and is considered the first to record her music. Another of my favorites of Viola’s songs is the beautiful Unelma Valssi, the Dream Waltz. I listen to it and it carries me far beyond Lake Worth, to Lapland and a cold and dreamy landscape.
