Santa
Claus has a distant relative in Italy called Babbo Natale
and he can be seen shimming up drainpipes, sneaking into
houses and hanging off balconies all over the place.
By the looks of things he is leaving with more loot than
he’s delivering. Babbo Natale seems to work
alone or occasionally with one or two other Babbo’s
and he is known to enter houses through a window or the
balcony door.
This
was our first Christmas in Italy and aside from the
surprise about Babbo there are more similarities than I
expected. Thankfully I have not yet seen
anything here that comes close to the madness of the day
after Thanksgiving mall-stampede that was televised
here. It might not have been so embarrassing had it
not followed a story on a bombing in a market in Iraq.
I
was elated to find out that decorations and general
preparations for Christmas doen't
begin here until the 8th of December.
“Christmas
decorations go up the 8th of December and come down the 6th
of January.” My friend Aldo explained like
it’s one of those things that everyone knows,
“Donna, you are living in a Catholic country now. We
live by the liturgical calendar. The 8th of December is the
day of Immaculate Conception and January 6th is the
Epiphany”. I had to look up liturgical in the
dictionary.
At first I didn't really care much abut the reason, I
was just happy that I wasn't hearing Christmas music and
being force fed holiday advertising in November – or
October for that matter.
Without the distractions that normally surrounded us
in early December, I started pondering the math. If
December 8th is the day the guy born on December 25th was
"immaculately conceived". Wouldn't that make it
either the shortest or the longest pregnancy known to
man? Not that I want to challenge any belief system
here, I mean we are talking about the son of God, so none
of the normal rules need apply, but I should remember
something about this from my eight years of incarceration
otherwise known as catholic school when I was forced to
wear pleated skirts and urine colored blouses. I kept
coming up empty.
None of the other Catholics that I checked with, American
or Italian, fallen or otherwise, knew the how, what or why
surrounding the details of the "immaculate
conception". So I googled it and even at dial up
speed I discovered yet another reason to question the
doctrine of organized religion. Come to find out that in
fact it's not the birth of Jesus who was "conceived
immaculately” it was his mother
Mary.
I realize I have spent far more time on this little
kernel than any sane person would. But now that I have the
answer I thought I would share it.
At some point along the way, the Vatican took time
out from managing the Papal States and killing off
uprisings to realize they had a conundrum on their
hands. If the mother of Jesus wasn't better than
everyone else, like REALLY better, people might not believe
that she was special enough to be the "mother of
god". I mean who really believed the whole virgin
birth thing anyway? (I know my parents
wouldn't.) So some 1400 or so years after the fact,
the pope of the day decided to turn back the hands of time
and insert a little footnote into the history of the birth
of Jesus and declare that Mary's birth should be declared
an "immaculate conception". (I won't take you down
the rabbit hole surrounding the idea of Original Sin)
So not only did they have the background check to do on
Mary, we are now supposed to buy into the fact that Mary's
mother also had some sort of special mojo to be the mother
of - the mother of Jesus.
I mean these guys are in the faith business
aren’t they? Can’t they just say so
and call it a day? Well, when you think about it I
guess that’s what they did.
Either way, the timing worked out well with Mary being born
on September 8th, they just subtracted nine months and with
a strike of the pen they launched the Christmas holiday
season in Italy.
If you’ve stuck with me this long, I hope you are
still interested in some of the differences between
Christmas in Italy and America:
- In Italy, they don’t decorate dead trees. The
choices come down to Alive or Artificial. When I
explained to my friends here that in America we have a
tradition of putting up and decorating a cut tree. Their
response was more curious than judgmental, “So, you
kill a tree for Christmas?” I never really
thought about it that way, but yes we do. I explained
that most of us don’t kill our trees personally. We
have someone else do the dirty work and we pay handsomely
for the service. Once cut we adorn the dying victim
with decorations and by the time Christmas day arrives our
houses are littered with brown needles and our once
beautiful tree has become a fire hazard surrounded by
presents. By New Years day all across America denuded
tree-corpses can be found dumped unceremoniously like some
unwanted reminder of the season of
giving.
We
opted for an Alive tree. Hopefully, we will be planting it
in the ground in January (or March), but if we wanted to,
we could return the tree to the place where we bought it
and call the 15 Euros (or $19.50) we spent a rental
fee.
-
Everyone in this part of Italy has their Christmas meal at
the same time. Lunch on Christmas day. If there
are conflicts, families combine or divide, that’s all
there is to it. The bosses of the scheduling seem to be
“those with children”. With a declining
birth rate in Italy, most grandparents are willing to do
whatever necessary to ensure first tier access to the
offspring.
When
I was a kid we had to eat two big meals on Christmas day so
that neither set of grandparents would be relegated to the
second string of Christmas Eve. In the late
morning we would drive to Grandma-with-the-Alan’s
house (because my fathers younger brothers name is Alan)
with my parents warning us the whole way not to eat too
much, which of course we did, then at 2:00 we were sprinted
off to Grandma-with-the-birdie’s (because she used to
have a bird. Even after it died the name stuck) who would
give my mother the stink-eye because we were always late
and we never ate much until after all the food was put
away. We liked Christmas with Grandma-with-the-Alan
because she cooked up a storm and she gave good presents
that always included a certain amount of cash. We
liked Grandma-with-the-Birdie because she taught us to play
poker and blackjack, we could swipe cigarettes when no one
was looking and everyone laughed, told stories and had fun.
Especially after the first round of
drinks.
-
Reindeer Lore – The Italians I have met seem to
understand the function of the reindeer solely as the
animals that lead the delivery vehicle for Babbo
Natale. Their version of reindeer seem to lack any
landing on the roof capabilities that ours have, and there
are questions about their ability to fly at all. Our
friends here had no idea that Americans attached
personalities to each individual reindeer, they were amazed
that both John and I could remember all their names.
We didn’t embarrass ourselves by singing
“Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer”, but we were
close, sadly close.
- In Italy gift-wrapping is more than a service - it is an
art. At any time of the year in Italy, if you tell a shop
keeper the purchase is a “regalo”, no matter
how many people are waiting, the purchase will be wrapped
with flourish and without charge. The smaller the
gift - the bigger the wrapping. Imagine how much less
stress there is in the days leading up to Christmas when
you don’t have to hunch over cheap wrapping paper and
last years bows trying to wrap every single gift.
Also, It has changed the way I shop to discover that there
are no refunds here, exchanges only, and then only after a
certain amount of interrogation and eye
rolling.
- Greetings of “Buon Giorno” changes to
“Auguri” the week before Christmas.
Auguri has a package of meanings that translates to wishes,
hope and expectations – all good. I’m not
sure yet what they say on New Years Eve, but New Years Day
is called Capodanno (or capi d’ anno), which roughly
translated means “Boss of the
year”.
- When asked who brought them their Christmas presents as a
kid, most adults answer that that Baby Jesus brought them
their presents on Christmas morning, however, their
children and grandchildren are getting their presents from
Babbo Natale. Another five years and there will be mall
stampedes across the globe.
- If you ask anyone young or old who fills their stockings
with treasures or coal – the answer across the board
is Befana.
Which
brings us to the closing of the holiday season in
Italy. The fable of Befana is a bit more vague.
It seems that one sect of the church thought that Jesus was
born on the 6th of January, while another group has it that
the wise men each separately had an epiphany that Jesus was
born and when they went looking for him they met up on the
road. They came across Befana an ugly old woman who was
cleaning her house when they invited her to come along with
them, but she turned them down. Afterwards,
sensing she had missed out on something big she decided to
go looking for the special child giving gifts to every
child she found along the way. The story goes that on
the morning of the 6th of January, Befana visits all small
children and leaves them treats if they are good, or coal
if they are not.
I’m leaving my stocking up just in
case.....