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Published: January 1st 2007
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Just getting started
Opening act to warm the crowd up...with Japanese drums??? Well we rang in the New Year last night, or should I say in the wee hours of the morning. I think that I can accurately describe how the locals (Brindisinos) celebrate this holiday. To begin with, the official holiday season begins on December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and runs through January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. I won’t go into the specifics of the religious significance, suffice it to say that if you are Catholic you probably know what they are about and if you aren’t….well, it’s a religious holiday. And in Italy most of the official holidays are centered around religious days of observance.
Although Santa Claus and the rest of that commercial aspect of Christmas has made inroads into Italian culture (and other parts of the globe), Babbo Natale is the official Father Christmas figure. Dec 25th is a day for family gathering and celebration. As I understand, there is some gift giving on that day but that is something that is done more on Jan 6th. That is the day the Magi (3 Kings or 3 Wise Men) visited the infant Jesus and presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The character
Party just starting
It is only 1:30AM and the crowd is just beginning to gather. that figures prominently in the holiday lore is La Befana. According to legend, the 3 Wise Men stopped at the house of this old woman to ask for directions and invited her to accompany them. She declined at first and then changed her mind and went to catch up with them. She didn’t find them or the baby Jesus and now at this time of year wanders the earth looking for him and bears gifts for children. Naughty children receive a lump of coal in their stockings. There is a hard candy that is made at this time of year that does indeed look like a lump of coal. Dolls representing La Befana are sold and displayed during the holidays. The representations range from an old peasant-looking woman to a haggish look to a Halloween-ish appearance with a black peaked hat. Beth and I like the peasant appearance and think the others are too scary for children.
Ok, so our landlord invited us to New Year’s Eve dinner. It was attended by family members and friends. There were 15 people in all and there was one plate of delicious food after another. I finally had to throw up my hands and say I just couldn’t eat one more bite. It was a terrific party and we met a gentleman (friend of the family) that is in the business of restoring furniture. He invited us to his place in the country for dinner. He particularly loves to cook Mexican and/or south American cuisine. He spoke very good Spanish and has lived in Houston, Texas. He didn’t like Texas! He also spoke English. The rest of the guests spoke only Italian and it was somewhat humorous that he kept speaking in Spanish to Beth.
As for me, it was just what the doctor ordered. I had been missing socializing opportunities; it was fun to get to meet new people and visit with them. Our host’s daughter initially introduced us as the American tenants and said that we spoke English and Spanish. I have noted that Italians are very gracious and are usually surprised and delighted if one speaks Italian. So they were appreciative when I was able to respond in Italian.
We left shortly before midnight and headed over to our school secretary’s family. The streets were deserted and we began to fear that there wasn’t much celebrating to be done. We arrived and at the stroke of midnight we had a bit of lentils (for good luck) and a holiday bread called panettone with a dry spumante. The bread has the texture of cinnamon rolls, it is yellow in color and doesn’t have icing but is still sweet and has raisins. This sold everywhere at this time and is bought by every Italian. You see mountains of this bread at stores everywhere.
At midnight the tugboats honked their horns and firecrackers started. We then headed downtown to one of the main piazzas where there was a stage set up. A group was performing on Japanese drums as part of the opening act. Yeah I see the connection too! When we first walked into the center, there were few people then it was as if the floodgates opened and people started pouring into the downtown area. We left around 2:30 and people were still arriving!
It was interesting that most people were dressed in their finest and there were all ages. We also noted that although some people were drinking, we didn’t see any stupid drunk behavior. Beth and I concluded that we can’t hang with the Italians when it comes to celebrating - we are a pair of lightweights we left before the main act even began! When we arrived at the house we could hear the music across the bay. We laughed and I said, “Well, I see that they are just getting started.”
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