VIRGINIA BEACH
For a solid month before Christmas, Dabney Napolitano is busy doing things she's done dozens of times before.
She always sets up her snow village in the den. She always puts greenery on the foyer banister. She always bakes trays and trays of "Nuts and Bolts."
On this Monday, with two weeks to go before the Christmas Eve dinner that Napolitano hosts for 30-some members of her extended family, she's taken yet another tray of a fragrant snack mix - a seasoned concoction of pretzel sticks, cereal and nuts - out of the oven, let it cool and poured it into plastic bags.
Napolitano's salty treat always follows the same recipe and is always given to the same recipients each holiday season, including to Philip J. Kellam, who is Virginia Beach's commissioner of the revenue and an old family friend. He became part of Napolitano's carefully orchestrated holiday traditions at least 15 years ago when he showed up at her house for the first time with a freshly killed turkey, a gift before Christmas Eve that he has made to her family every year since.
And always, for what one bountiful season was an especially large, whopping, 28 pounds of still-warm plucked poultry, Napolitano always gratefully presents Kellam with a gift bag of "Nut and Bolts."
To some, this might appear to be an uneven exchange.
But here, as is true for many families at the holidays, it is impossible to explain or to overemphasize the importance of tradition, no matter what it is.
Many family customs that Napolitano continues every year were started by her grandmother, Grace Twohy of Norfolk, continued by Napolitano's mother, Peggy Twohy, and after Napolitano's mother's death in 2004, adopted by Napolitano herself.
The traditions are many and deep on this piece of land overlooking the Lynnhaven River.
When Napolitano and her husband, builder Fred Napolitano, built their present home, there were architectural elements of the house that Dabney Napolitano wanted to re-create from family homes she remembered from her childhood in Norfolk. That way, certain elements of Christmas would look the same from generations past to present.
It tickles her to think that she has succeeded and, now, also has added things unique to her that her Christmas guests expect to experience, along with the old.
As they arrive on Christmas Eve, guests can look forward to seeing the latest addition to Napolitano's snow village, something her mom started for her with her gift of the first tiny house.
"It's a wonderful village," Napolitano said, tugging a sheet of cotton batting into place and pointing out tiny figures walking and playing in the pretend snow. "See? Everybody's having fun."
Across the room in the den stands a cluster of snowmen. On a table around the corner, like always, her collection of tiny Santa scenes.
This year her big Santa collection, long popular with family, will shake things up a bit. Napolitano has so many Santas now that her sister suggested they find a new spot for them in the foyer. So, for the first time, the Santas with their fabric clothes and many accessories will be snuggled into branches of fresh magnolia at the foot of the staircase.
Above them is the contoured handrail that Napolitano and her husband copied from Dabney Napolitano's mother's house in Ghent, where Dabney grew up with her five sisters at 550 Mowbray Arch. Nearby lived Dabney's Gram Twohy at 442 Mowbray Arch.
"We always went there for Christmas Eve dinner," Napolitano said. "So all of my traditions are really my Gram Twohy's."
Back then, Napolitano and her little sisters always wore red or black velvet dresses with Peter Pan collars. These days everyone still puts on special outfits and coats and ties, and arrives to enjoy cocktails and shucked oysters and the anticipation of the single gift that each person receives on Christmas Eve.
Just like his wife's grandmother once did, Fred Napolitano sets the formal Christmas Eve dinner table with finery: linens, freshly polished silver, good china, crystal and candles.
Elements of the room in which dinner takes place are copied from Dabney Napolitano's childhood home in Ghent: the same woodwork, the same fireplace mantel.
In the center hall hangs the same portrait of Napolitano's grandfather that hung in her mother's house and, above it, the same hovering trio of angels playing the accordion, lyre and violin.
"My mother always hung those at Christmas, so when she died, I really wanted them, and now I hang them the same way, too," she said.
Fourteen people fit around the Napolitanos' long dining room table. Others end up at card tables and at a drop-leaf table set up along the edges of the room. More sit around a table laid in the living room. Who sits where also is a long-established tradition.
She pointed around her big table indicating where her parents were once seated each year in their house in Norfolk.
"My dad would sit here, and to the right was always his sister, Pat Rector," she said. "Mom sat at the other end, and to her right was always Dr. (George) Rector. Yeah, I can picture it right now. I always sat on the street side and my sister, Boo, always sat on the kitchen side."
Now, in her own home with the previous generation gone or retired from hosting, Napolitano and her husband have taken over the host and hostess spots.
She laughed, saying, "It's still the same now, with us. You don't make it to the head table unless somebody dies. My kids are 29, 27 and 23, so I try to get my children in the room and the older cousins, too. They sit at the card tables."
Everyone always holds hands before the meal as grace is said and everyone, even the smallest guest with the tiniest glass, is allowed to be served at least one tiny sip of wine, just like in Napolitano's Gram Twohy's house.
The food is the same every year: a buffet with the gifted turkey, collards, string beans, Smithfield ham and lots of rolls and butter.
After dinner come the finger bowls. Napolitano owns 50 of the cut-glass dishes.
"My father would make floating candles out of Coke bottle tops and wicks and wax, and we'd put one in each finger bowl, light them, turn out the lights and bring them into the dining room on trays and pass them out and sing "Silent Night."
Nowadays, the floating candles are purchased, but, just like back then, when the finger washing ends, it's time for dessert: always peppermint ice cream with hot fudge sauce, just like Napolitano's Gram Twohy used to serve.
"Christmas Eve is our favorite time," Napolitano said. "It means a lot to us to do it this way. It's just a magical time for all of us."
Krys Stefansky, 757-446-2043, krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com