Greg Schmitt didn’t need a ham dinner with green beans and scalloped potatoes to celebrate Christmas with his family Thursday.
Instead, the Tarentum man traded in the traditional holiday spread for a plateful of piping-hot General Tso’s chicken at a modest Chinese buffet.
“It’s nice to have a place to go and not have anything to clean up,” said Schmitt, 59, a pest-control worker celebrating Christianity’s biggest holiday by chowing down with family at Lower Burrell’s China Lobster restaurant. “It’s easy. You don’t get stressed. And there’s never any dishes.”
Schmitt — joined Thursday by his wife, their son, a niece and his mother-in-law visiting from out of town — was far from the only one making Christmas memories without help from mistletoe or fruitcake.
Stu Henlis, dining just a few tables away from Schmitt, originally didn’t have plans for Christmas.
The New Kensington resident, who retired years ago from a typesetting business he ran in New Jersey, has little family in the area. He has no spouse, no children.
“It’s tough when you don’t have anybody,” said Henlis, 75. “I was going to stay at home and watch TV. I’m not going to make a ham for myself.”
But Henlis said his old neighbor, a widower who Henlis hasn’t seen in years, “called out of the blue” and suggested the two grab a bite at a bottomless buffet.
Henlis said China Lobster’s vegetable lo mein, coated with a decent helping of sweet-and-sour sauce, turned out to be just the thing he needed this week.
By contrast, many Asian restaurants were surprisingly quiet Thursday in Squirrel Hill. The Pittsburgh neighborhood is known as the region’s center of Jewish life — and Asian restaurants and markets outnumber synagogues there nearly 3-1.
Shortly before noon, a single family ate lunch at Yue Bai Wei on Forbes Avenue and had the entire Sichuan restaurant to themselves.
Just two children tinkered with toys inside Ebisu Life Store, a market overflowing with Japanese food and trinkets. Both Chow’s Kitchen and Amazing Dumplings, which serves “North China home-style cuisine,” sat empty after opening near 11 a.m.
But don’t tell bookstore owner Eric Ackland that Christmas was a quiet day in Squirrel Hill.
Dozens of bibliophiles and browsers filled the aisles at Ackland’s Amazing Books & Records, one of the only retail shops open Thursday in the neighborhood’s business district.
Ackland, who is Jewish, welcomed everyone who entered his Forbes Avenue shop with vegan brownies and steaming cups of hot cocoa. Those 21 and older could choose if they wanted to supplement their winter beverage with a touch of espresso liqueur.
“We like to have a space where people can just be,” said Ackland, 54, of Pittsburgh’s Greenfield neighborhood. “This can be a hard time of year for a lot of people. It really feels good to be able to provide a place for people to get out of the house.”
Amazing Books has embraced the trend. Ackland plans to serve free beer and sparkling water at his Squirrel Hill location late on New Year’s Eve — until 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, in fact.
All three Amazing Books locations are open on New Years’ Day — again, with complimentary hot cocoa. Ackland has another spot in Shadyside and a Downtown pop-up location at One Oxford Centre.
For some, those holiday specials, which Ackland started in 2021, have become their own sort of tradition.
Just ask Shmuel Zlotnikov, who manned the cocoa station Thursday morning.
The Pitt alumnus started working at Amazing Books seven years ago, when he was just 16. Though Zlotnikov now lives on the West Coast, working toward his doctorate in chemistry at University of California, Berkeley, he returns to Pittsburgh every December.
“I’ll always be here around this time,” Zlotnikov, 23, told TribLive. “I’m Jewish. So it makes no difference to me that it’s Christmas.”
Others, though, embraced a bit of an unorthodox expression of the Christmas spirit.
Francie Marais, a nondeminational Christian whose children live outside Pennsylvania, told TribLive she had no concrete Christmas plans when she read on social media that Amazing Books would be serving holiday treats Thursday.
The Washington County woman said she was so thrilled about the concept she decided to check it out.
“It’s a new way to do Christmas,” said Marais, 83, of Canonsburg, as she browsed for books with her longtime partner. “I like it — Christmas at a book store!”