Christmas. The Christmas season in the US is said to start the day after Thanksgiving. This always seemed a tad long to me. And then I moved to Germany.
Christmas season in Germany begins around the first week of October, when chocolate santas (better known here as The Christmas Man) and countless varieties of gingerbread start appearing in stores. I think it´s just that in the US we have so many other holidays that have been inflated by Hallmark over the years - Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, that there isn´t room in the stores to start stocking... stockings... until a bit later (admittedly the first two holidays mentioned haven´t really been over-marketed yet, but I won´t be surprised when they start selling Columbus cookies (spice cookies would seem appropriate) - it´s just a matter of time).
Anyway, I think Christmas is great. What isn´t always so great or easy, is explaining to people that I don´t celebrate it. I thought it would be easy. Well-intentioned, concerned, caring people would ask me: Why aren´t you going home for Christmas? And I would say, I am Jewish... end of story. Instead this just illicited puzzled looks and a repeat of the question, "Yes, but why aren´t you going home for Christmas?" as though my response were a totally unrelated nonsensical utterance akin to:
well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"
my hypothetical nonsensical answer: "I like cake!"
wip: "That´s nice, but seriously, why no Christmas?"
To avoid a long explanation about differing views among religions regarding messianism (I had this conversation with someone once a few years ago, and just about the only thing you can actually say is: "my ancestors just weren´t convinced" about 10 times) I have considered some other, more definitive responses:
well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"
my possible answer: "My family was consumed by man-eating lions."
wip: "I am so sorry, I will never ask you about Christmas... or going to the zoo... again"
or
well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"
my possible answer: "My family lives on Mars, and by the time I got home to celebrate, it would be Christmas 2011"
wip: "That is indeed too far to travel, better stay here."
Fortunately for me, however, I did have excellent Christmas plans with a wonderful family.
So just before Christmas, I headed off to another country that knows how to rock Weihnacht (xmas), Italy!
To make a long wonderful story short and less interesting, four years ago I happened to befriend an extremely nice Italian girl while I was living in Vienna. Though she barely knew me, she invited me to come to spend Christmas with her family, who lives about an hour outside Venice. It was amazing, and by the end of the visit I had begun a wonderful friendship and had been basically adopted by a great Italian family.
It´s hard to put into words exactly how it feels to return after several years to a place that holds such distinctive memories as those I have from my first Christmas in Megliadino San Vitale - to step off at the same tiny rural train station, to see once more the same medieval city walls engulfed in mist, to hear again a familiar and yet still very much foreign language. Although four years isn´t really very long, I think it is through instances like this that you can actually detect the passage of time in your own life - that people around you have grown taller, shorter, more wrinkled, less baby-faced, louder, quieter, that they have been somewhere, changed in some way, despite a backdrop that is more or less consistent.
Megliadino San Vitale is a village of 2,000 people in the Padua Province of the Veneto Region of Italy. It is one of 10 small towns and cities that together make up the "dieci comune". The largest town is called Montagnana, a molto medievale (very medieval) city of about 10,000.
I had a great time getting to know the people, not only in my friend Giorgia´s wonderful family, but the many others in her village and the neighboring ones who took the time to speak with me. It wasn´t easy. I don´t really speak Italian, and most of them don´t really speak English, but I am a big believer that if you care enough you will find a way to communicate, and we did. I can now speak a bit of Veneto dialect... most importantly I can understand things like "sentate e manya" (sit and eat), an order often given to me by Giorgia´s Nonna.
Here is Nonna Bionda making homemade pasta. Nonna Bionda is an incredible octogenarian who wakes up everyday at the crack of dawn to cook from scratch (her house is known by her family as the hotel and supermarket to all), terrorize the family cat, insist constantly that I am not eating enough - she once smacked me for neglecting to tell her that I don´t really like salami after sort of eating it for a week (I was being polite!).
I am incredibly thankful to the whole Munaro family for having been so welcoming to me (for a second time). They generously took me into their home, shared their traditions with me, and treated me like a member of the family.
Fortunately for me, I happen to have another friend from a nearby part of Veneto region, and one of the Chinese fellows, Bing, was visiting him for Christmas. So, Giorgia and I headed to the city of Vicenza to see the guys.
I stayed with the guys for a few nights in Luca´s village Trissino at the foot of the little Dolomites. We helped Bing prepare a 10 course Chinese dinner for Luca´s extremely patient family (they tried everything really enthusiastically despite being unaccostomed to a lot of new very spicy flavors). As Luca´s camera broke midway through the cooking process, I took on the role of, "capturing the process". Since this post is getting pretty long, I think I will just end with some photos and captions of Trissino, Chinese dinner, and our visit to nearby Verona. Bing was particularly thrilled to learn that Jews "traditionally" eat Chinese food on Christmas... And of course, on the drive to Verona, Luca decided to see who was more educated on Christmas, an American Jew or a Chinese Muslim raised under communism... hence "Rachel and Bing discuss the birth of Christ"... I totally won :)
Not spicy.
Spicy
The guys.
Verona
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