Moving to Italy: Christmas—Part 1

December reminded us of Christmas, and Christmas reminded us of family. We wanted to send greetings to all of our family and friends in England, Canada and the States, so we drove to Casale to look for Christmas cards. The ones we found were written in Italian, but the pictures and the sentiment needed no translation. That Christmas would be our first one without my sister, and throughout that December and January memories of other holidays haunted me.

When we moved to Italy, I brought along my entire collection of family photographs.  Some were housed in albums, and some were loose. I had inherited the entire collection of black and white photographs that my mother had inherited from her mother, and I treasured them as she had. My mother had packed them in the trunk when we moved from England to Canada and from Canada to California. I packed those same photographs along with my own into that same trunk and took them to Italy. Sometimes, on a rainy afternoon, we spread them out on the dining room table. I went around the collection naming the people in the black and white images. The children preferred pictures of people they knew, and laughed at the one of my sister and me in Toronto posing with my dog in front of our Christmas tree

 

  In the same way, I found great joy in looking at photos of younger versions of my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my mother. I hung my sister’s framed wedding picture on the wall in my bedroom, so that the children would remember the aunt and uncle who sent letters and gifts—and peanut butter—from California. I also displayed pictures of my mother on my dresser. None of the children had known her, but it was very important to me that they knew the woman in the picture holding baby Paul, was my mother and their grandmother who had died just a few days after Paul’s first Christmas.  

We were surprised to find that Christmas was a very low-key holiday in Italy of 1971. When we bought our Christmas cards in Casale, there was no sign of Santa waiting to greet children (with the requisite photo op). There were neither snowmen nor elves decorating the shop windows, and the streets were not lined with colored lights and fake trees. The focus seemed to be more on the religious aspect of the holiday rather than the secular. At the asilo the boys were preparing a show for the parents, and I looked forward to the first celebration of the season. 

However, we had a connection with many different rituals and routines, and as we looked through the photographs of Christmases past, the boys became excited and wanted to reproduce what they saw and vaguely remembered: a decorated tree with presents underneath delivered by a mysterious Santa who came riding a sleigh at night. They eagerly agreed to making Christmas lists—Paul writing and James dictating. Margaret Ann and Matthew had no idea of what we were all on about but echoed the words they heard the boys repeating: Santa, present, treeee! We wanted to celebrate Christmas as usual, but George and I found we had to compromise and improvise to create a holiday like the ones we had known. First up was the tree.