Pretzel salad? Girardi dishes on holiday faves

PHILADELPHIA -- Joe Girardi is just a few months away from his first full-squad workout as the Phillies’ new manager. But first, the holidays.

Girardi and his wife, Kim, took a few minutes of their time recently and shared some of their favorite Christmas traditions:

Favorite Christmas memory as a kid

“It’s when my grandmother and grandpa from my dad’s side came over,” Girardi said. “My grandma always brought these huge cinnamon rolls. She made two big pans -- one with nuts and one without. And that was because I didn’t like nuts. They were fabulous. The pies she brought over on Christmas Day were unbelievable.”

Favorite Christmas gift as a kid

“It would have been a new baseball glove,” he said. “As a young boy I’d leave it out in the rain all the time and have to dry it out. My mom would get all over me, but it was a glove.”

Favorite Christmas traditions

“Every Christmas Eve we go to a restaurant and eat with our good friends, who are the owners,” he said. “The kids do the white elephant gift exchange. Then we go to another friend’s house. Santa comes. Our friend’s brother dresses up as Santa. He’d give the kids all the gifts. He was hilarious. He even had one of the police officers in New York come and dress up as one of the elves. It’s just fabulous.

“One of the greatest traditions that we do … unfortunately, Kim lost her sister 10 years ago to cancer. Her two boys, her husband and Kim’s mother, they always meet us in New York and do all of this with us. Then one of the other favorite things we do is go up to Windham Mountain [in New York]. We would go skiing. But my kids thought the best thing about Windham Mountain was the waffles at the bottom. I’m telling you, I would spend $50 a piece on lift tickets and like $20 a piece on waffles.

“We play hide the pickle. We play that. We break all the ornaments on the tree because everybody has to outdo everybody else to find where it’s hidden.”

Favorite Christmas movie

“'Fred Claus,' I don’t even have to think about it. 'Fred Claus.'”

Kim mentions "Home Alone" as a family favorite.

“Oh, wait a minute now. Can we put a slash in there?” he said. “But the scene in 'Fred Claus' when he’s dancing with all the elves, when he spices up the boring music, is great.”

Something you always have on the table for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day dinner

“The dinner table, a tradition of ours was always ham and ravioli. My dad also made a pretzel salad.”

Kim mentions it is not a salad. Girardi laughs.

“You crush pretzels and you put in butter and you bake it,” he said. “That’s the bottom layer.”

“That’s not a salad obviously,” Kim said.

“The next layer is cream cheese and whipped cream mixed,” Girardi said. “And then you put strawberry Jell-O on top. If you Google pretzel dessert, it comes up. I can remember Kim came to our house for Christmas when we were dating. She said, ‘That is not a salad.’ I said, ‘It says pretzel salad.’”

“His whole family thought I was crazy,” Kim said, laughing. “It was so funny. I said, ‘This is dessert,’ but they served it as a salad. Oh my gosh, it’s so good. It’s amazing.”