The dozens of meals that volunteers served at an Elks lodge in Oakmont on Thursday afternoon felt as much about tradition as they did the spirit of Christmas Day.
About 50 people gathered to break bread at 2 p.m. in the Washington Avenue lodge’s dining room — and the details were carefully choreographed.
Visitors ate holiday staples like ham, green beans and Italian wedding soup. Pies came in apple and cherry.
Guests mostly sat clustered around circular tables cloaked in maroon cloths and topped with garlands and votive candles. A towering Christmas tree, complete with shimmering silver ornaments and decked in semi-translucent ribbon, stood sentinel in a corner. Holiday standards floated from nearby speakers.
For Dennis Kanouff, who has helped cook the annual Christmas meal for its entire 20-year run, the details Thursday spoke to both the giving nature of the season and the Elks’ dedication to charity and service.
In a way, the meal — and the people who prepared it — also reflected the passage of time, he said. The average age of the nearly 400 members in the Oakmont lodge, he noted, dropped this year.
“The nice thing is you look around and you have old people here, like me, people in their 80s, but we also have young people, people with their own families and with their own kids,” Kanouff told TribLive. “That’s how it becomes tradition. And that’s what it’s all about.”
Jean Urik, 64, has her own traditions at the Oakmont lodge. The Kittaning woman has joined friends there at the holiday meal, a kind of social lifeline, every year for nearly a decade now.
For her, the Christmas meal is a reminder of how she has persevered through hard times.
Service in the U.S. Navy brought Urik to Spain and to states from California to Florida. But, she told TribLive, she cut her military career short decades ago when she gave birth to a child with special needs.
She cared for her mother, Dorothy, as the matriarch battled — and then lost her battle to — cancer. Urik lost her father, Steve, to cancer, too.
The youngest of 11 children, Urik watched six of her siblings die.
Don Hines, 64, of Butler Township — Urik’s partner of 11 years and her date at Thursday’s meal — struggles with health issues and goes nowhere without an oxygen tank.
“Yeah, it’s made me tougher,” said Urik, in between bites of honey-glazed ham. “I appreciate every hard lesson in life I’ve had. Not a lot of people can be happy about that. But I can.”
Urik leans hard into her Christian faith. She still remembers the day she became a born-again Christian: July 4, 1982.
“I’m quite blessed,” Urik said. “There were a lot of bumps in the road. But the Lord is so good to us.”
Helen Slaninka, who sat at the table with Urik, said she also felt blessed Thursday. She first came to the Oakmont meal in 2016, when she and her sister were mourning the death of their mother.
“It was a tough time for us — and this just warmed our heart,” Slaninka, who lives in Saxonburg, said.
“We started as friends,” Connie Gaiser, sitting two seats down from Slaninka, chimed in. “And we’re family now.”
Kelly Stockman gets it.
The Plum woman and her husband, Sam, said they felt like they became part of a tight-knit community when they joined the Elks a few months ago. They said they cooked on Christmas Day with a sense of purpose.
“We figured this was a good chance to come in, to give back to an organization that does so much,” said Stockman, 36.
“We’ve only been members for six months,” she added. “And everyone here? They treat us like family.”