Auguri!

It’s December 29th as I write this, the fifth day of Christmas. Back home I suspect the holiday is long over, the Christmas season, at least in my experience, begins some time before Halloween and ends shortly after Christmas dinner. Over here, it’s still going strong.
Of course, it starts a lot later over here. With the exception of the fake pine arch that went up in front of the bar down the street around Halloween (and actually, it may have been up year round and I just hadn’t noticed it before), the first signs of the holiday don’t appear until well into December. Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, is a major holiday and is the usual day for decorating the home and putting up a tree if you have one. (The Christmas tree is not a universal decoration in Italy and, I’ve been told, becomes scarcer as you travel south. Everybody, on the other hand, puts up a Nativity scene.)

The city welcomed the Christmas season at its own pace. Every day something new would appear. I walked into Piazza Navonna on the 3rd to find that they had cleared out the art peddlers and street musicians and had set up what looked like a carnival midway, complete with merry-go-round and games. Booths around the perimeter have been selling crèche figures and La Befana, the witch who fills the stockings of good children on Epiphany. Stalls sell torrone, a seasonal candy of nougat and nuts that comes in both a soft, gummy morbido and a molar cracking duro, as well as candy apples, Nutello smeared crepes (I have unfortunately discovered that Nutello is good stuff), and cotton candy, which on windy nights tends to slip its surly bonds and go wafting through the air. A disreputable looking Santa holds court from his sleigh by one of the fountains.
Throughout the city, decorations went up piece meal. The tree halfway up the Spanish Steps was only partially decorated by the 15th. The Nativity Scene in St Peter’s Square, assembled behind canvas,isn’t revealed until Christmas Eve. The inflatable snow globe next store to the Shwarma Shack didn’t arrive until the 20th. Every walk through town became a little more interesting. I have yet to see an animated Christmas shop window but the wrought chocolate stable at Giolitti’s continues to draw a crowd.

In the ongoing debate between colored and white lights, white clearly got the nod, with a strong contingent of pale blue on a few streets. Via de Coronari (the way of the rosary bead makers), a straight narrow shot from Navonna to the Tiber, is hung thick with strands and stars and looks great, as do a number of the main thoroughfares.
Sadly the weather didn’t always cooperate. A cold snap about 10 days ago froze the water in some of the fountains but it was followed by a warming trend and lots of rain. On Christmas Eve morning the skies opened, throwing down monsoon sheets of rain. (I, unfortunately, was conducting a tour of the Palatine Hill at the time. I’ve never been that wet in my adult life.) Rain pounded through the afternoon but eased around 5. A friend had called that afternoon with tickets to Midnight Mass at St. Pete’s so I was grateful.

Midnight Mass started at 10:00 PM (Don’t ask questions.). The doors opened at 8:30 and we planned to arrive around 8. By then the line already completed a full circle around St. Peter’s Square (which is neither a square nor a circle but it is really big). The wait wasn’t bad. A group of German priest behind us took advantage of the time to practice their hymns and we took turns wandering over to check out the Nativity Scene. (There was a side installation of a Philippine fishing village (the Apostles were fishers of men) that was interesting. Apparently, every year a different country is awarded the honor of adding a temporary addition to the display.) We were inside in no time.
St Peter’s is massive. It’s also one of the few buildings that uses forced perspective tricks to make it appear and feel smaller than it really is. We were sitting fairly close to the aisle and realized when he passed that the pope was a small man but by the time he got to the altar, he was tiny. Choirs were stashed in various side chapels and a small brass choir was perched on a balcony that was w-a-a-y up there. Mass was being broadcast by Vatican TV so the entire basilica was bathed in bright light. The multi-lingual service was hardly an intimate experience but memorable nonetheless. Walking out at the close and gazing down on the square with its massive obelisk and tree was a stunner.
The crowd quickly soaked up the fleet of waiting cabs and the Metro had stopped running at 9 so I was walking but the rain had stopped and it was a pleasant enough night. It wasn’t a lonely walk. In a town of 500 churches, there are plenty of people on the streets as midnight mass is letting out. I stopped off at Piazza Navonna for a candy cane (first of the season, and at 1 Euro a piece, probably the last) and made my way home.
We all have our Christmas traditions and I have mine, so before going to sleep I got on my laptop and sorted through youtube until I found a clip of Darlene Love singing Christmas (Baby, please come home), then fired up my Kindle, hopped into bed and started reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I think I made it to the fourth paragraph.

Christmas day itself was quiet and drizzling. Heading out to a brunch, I would have sworn the town was deserted but as the day progressed, more and more people appeared on the streets and by nightfall, a number of shops had opened. By Sunday, the streets were in full bustle. The rain seemed to have finely cleared away and a bright, jovial, stirring cold had settled in. Everywhere people were wishing each other Buon Natale, the more politically correct Bona Feste, or the all-purpose Auguri, which translates roughly into “Best Wishes” but is far more robust and festive than that meager greeting.

And so it continues. The streets are full of visitors, Santa still is still offering his lap, Carabinari’s, particularly those scheduled by attractions like the Trevi Fountain, have traded in their sub-machine guns for capes and cutlasses and pose with children, and folks are singing carols in St. Peter’s Square. I wandered down to Navonna Tuesday night were a small and mobile brass band was cooking up a second line-Latino hybrid that had driven a bunch of high school kids to spontaneous choreography. It didn’t have much to do with Christmas but it was festive…and what’s wrong with that.
Auguri!