How Hurricane Katrina Changed Holiday Traditions in This New Orleans Family
As part of Capital B’s coverage of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina later this month, we’re proud to present “What Was Lost,” a series of reflections by Louisianans who survived the storm, produced by our collaborators at Verite News.
NEW ORLEANS — Growing up, holidays were a lot of fun because we had really huge family gatherings. So my mom hosted Christmas. Her cousin Armand hosted New Year’s, and her cousin Donald hosted Thanksgiving. So we had three big family gatherings back to back. That was really a lot of fun. So Christmas always took place in the house that we’re sitting in on Dumaine Street, and it was just a lot of cooking.
The family meals were fairly traditional: gumbo, turkey, maybe ham. So for the most part, those were sort of the core foods. And each matriarch would make their own, so it wasn’t really like a potluck. So every holiday we would have, like, my mom’s cooking for Christmas, and we would have for Thanksgiving Carol, who was Donald’s second wife. She would do all of her cooking. And then for New Year’s, we would have Earline’s cooking. So Christmas and Thanksgiving were very similar…