Holidays
How LIC Celebrates Long Island City, with a current population of 170,000 residents, is the fastest growing
neighborhood in the country. Residents represent all walks of life – from the young, growing
families to families who have lived in the area for generations.
The neighborhood’s incredibly diverse population celebrates the holidays in different ways,
pulling from family traditions while making new ones. This season three residents share how
they spend their holidays.
The
Legacy
Name: Doreen Dwyer
24 DECEMBER 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
BY JESSICA TUQUERO
JESSICA@MACROPUBLICRELATIONS.COM
Occupation: Retired
Number of Years in LIC: All my life (I’m over 60 years old). My
great grandparents settled in LIC when they migrated from Italy.
My grandparents and parents lived here, and now I do. My sons
live here and will be the fifth generation.
How she celebrates: I celebrate Christmas. When I was a kid
growing up, there were relatives in all the buildings around me;
Italian families are big.
The neighborhood smelled fishy on Christmas Eve because we’d be
preparing for our traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner. My
grandmother lived in the last building on the block. We’d all go there
for dinner. The buildings had railroad rooms, so sometimes
we’d move beds out of the room. We needed the
space for long tables for everyone to sit and eat.
On Christmas, we would go back to my
grandmother’s. We always had some kind
of roast with pasta and gravy.
Favorite memory: As a kid grow-ing
up here in LIC, you couldn’t
ask for a better place to live. We
had clean homes with parents that
cooked. When we’d go to mass on
Sundays, you could smell from the
street meatballs frying and the gravy
cooking. My friend Linda would always
come over with two meatballs in her
hands – one for me and one for her. We
never locked our doors, and our homes were
actually very nice. My street was a play street, so
the street was closed during sum-mers
and no cars could go through.
We always had the sprinklers on.
Traditions she hopes to continue:
I now spend Christmas with my niece in
Westchester. Every year I make the bac-cala
salad, and we still have our Christmas
day roast with pasta and gravy.
Photos courtesy of shutterstock
Photos by Freepik
