One of the consequences of marrying someone from a different culture and then living in a third country is that our Christmas plans vary wildly from year to year. It’s a hefty investment for two people to fly from Europe to the U.S. at the most expensive time on the calendar – and my wife, being southern Italian, finds New York winters particularly grim. Staying in Ireland, where we live, is also not a perfect option, neither of us having relatives there and (as I try to convince her) the constant drizzle is worse than the snow. More times than not, I don’t get to spend the holiday season with my family … but I’ll probably end up working through my guilt on a beach in 80-degree weather.
Last year, we spent Christmas with my wife’s family in her birthplace of Taranto, in the heel of the Italian boot. Whatever images one might have of southern Italy are probably accurate for somewhere in the country, but not there. There’s various ways to describe Taranto, a city of 200,000 with Europe’s largest steel plant and a not-insignificant level of mafia presence. Here are two quick anecdotes I’m choosing this time:
- Two years ago, I waited on a park bench while my wife ran errands. Not one for idle time, I pulled a book out of my jacket and started reading. When I came back, my wife berated me. “Are you insane?” she said. “If people see you with a book, you’ll look weak and get beat up!”
- Last year, during the holiday season, my wife drove us into town. I noticed that none of the traffic lights worked. She had to force her way into every intersection, amid the yelling and hand gestures of the other drivers. “Man, I hope they get the lights fixed soon,” I said. “This is crazy.” My wife laughed at my ignorance. “The city council turned them off on purpose,” she said. “Because no one follows traffic rules anyway, they thought it best to just shut them off.”
A visit to Taranto is always part novelty and part survival. In all the ways that the human experience is universal, when you marry a person from somewhere else, you’re also to some extent marrying that culture. As such, I was overdue for a Christmas in Taranto and enjoyed the insider look into an Italian Christmas, particularly the Christmas Eve dinner.
It is impossible to overstate the value southern Italians place on food. The dinner, for four of us (with my brother-in-law) went like this: Appetizers (antipasti) included deep-fried cod, grilled octopus, octopus in vinegar, a breaded salmon roll, a meat and cheese board, olives and finally breaded cauliflower. My wife knew enough to remind me that more was coming and to plan accordingly. The first course (primo piatto) was a pappardelle pasta with scampi in a tomato sauce, as well as baked prawns with breadcrumbs and garlic. The second course (secondo piatto) was giant fried prawns. For dessert, there was a Christmas tree made out of pineapple slices, as well as seven different types of typical pastries.
As my stomach grew, my mind became more sluggish. Because I couldn’t find the words in Italian quick enough to say that I was full, I ate whatever my mother-in-law pushed in front of me until my wife eventually tired of watching me suffer and finally interceded. I was so stuffed I could barely keep from drifting asleep and falling out of my chair. Even breathing was difficult. Still, what happened next was hard to comprehend, no matter how many times I had seen it before: After eating all of that, the Italians immediately started talking about their next meal.
While the food was impressive, perhaps the most notable aspect of the Christmas experience was the nativity scene. Where I grew up in rural New York, local churches dragged out the same porcelain statues they used the last 20 years and stuck them in the front lawn. Inevitably, Baby Jesus was stolen in one town or another. The year before, we visited friends in Spain for Christmas, where every city built a massive nativity scene out of small clay figures only several inches tall, but that stretched for the lengths of entire municipal buildings. We had to queue for an hour just to see it. However, Faggiano, a small town just outside Taranto, topped that easily with their version of il presepe vivente – the living nativity scene.
The “scene” was essentially an entire village reconstructed. Approximately 100 people (or one-fifth of the nearest town where I grew up) were dressed and engaged in occupations likely to be found 2,000 years ago. In addition to Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, there were everything from blacksmiths to shoemakers to ceramists. Cheesemakers produced actual ricotta on site from sheep to give out to visitors, while the innkeeper offered wine and the breadmakers gave out their wares from a stone oven. It was all set on an arid hillside, with natural caves and small cliffs, as if the exact surroundings we all imagine for the birth of Christ. When I was handed a paper cup of warm ricotta, the fact that it tasted bad made it seem even more authentic. As far as I knew, this was Bethlehem. How it could have arisen from the chaos all around it was probably a Christmas miracle in itself.
This Christmas, we’re going to upstate New York. There will be no beaches to lie on or octopus to eat. Having lived there for more than half of my life, I don’t expect to find anything new or novel. However, I will be able to read where I want without the threat of violence, and if the only traffic light in town stopped blinking, it wouldn’t change much. In other words, it will be a familiar, and maybe a simple Christmas, but that’s all right sometimes too.
