Christmas and Culture

I have on my list of things to do to find out about Christmas here.  This sounds silly perhaps: it's Christmas.  We all know what that is.  But I feel like we'll be figuring out the culture all year, and still we'll have so much to learn.  I mean, at home we do teacher gifts -- will that be okay here or just strange? do kids here believe in Santa Claus?  There are signs for Black Friday and Black Friday week here.  In fact, today is Black Friday.  But we're not sure that the Italian stores actually know the origin of Black Friday.  Mary said that one of her teachers asked her this week to explain what Black Friday actually is.  Her description: the day after Thanksgiving when there are huge sales.  Yep, that's about it.

Black Friday for us as kids meant driving into Boston and meeting my aunt and grandmother at Downtown Crossing early.  It was the girls: my two sisters, my mom, my grandmother, my aunt, and I.  Our mission: find our Christmas dresses.  Actually, this meant find the dresses that we would be gifted for Christmas that would then not be worn until Easter.  So we spent the day after Thanksgiving trying on dresses that we would get for Christmas and that we wouldn't wear until Easter.  After Easter, you could wear your Easter dress all you wanted.  I have fond memories of being in Filene's and the adults' bringing me dresses, but I also remember a lot of being lethargic, the way shopping felt weeks later when my dad would take us out on a Saturday to go Christmas shopping for my mom.  We went to Burlington Mall, store to store, waiting for the Brigham's break.  Cathy would try on some clothes to estimate how they would fit my mom; he'd request the outfit that was on the mannequin; we little kids would find a place to sit every chance we got.

But Christmas.  I'm wondering about Santa Claus.  We have only one who still believes, but she believes entirely, and so her belief might carry us all.  And this reminds me: it's the Friday after Thanksgiving -- Elf on the Shelf arrives today!  Once I figure out where I hid that elf when I unpacked, I can hide him again.  It's possible that this year Daniel and I will have three other elves to help hide the elf with their now knowledge of Santa Claus.

In Viterbo, apparently, people get Christmas trees, but only artificial because there aren't enough real trees.  Daniel spouted me some millions of people population in a place the size of New Mexico yesterday, but I don't remember the number of millions.

[One student just said (students are writing about yesterday's Thanksgiving in Italy...today, a 15 minute writing after days of 10...we are gearing up for next week in Rome = five 15 minute entries on blog), "Are you allowed to comment on our blogs?"  I laughed.  No no no! I wanted to shout.  I want to read their blogs because I like them.  I like seeing this other side of them, reading their ideas and stories and things that they might never say in class...though surprisingly and wonderfully, they share themselves in the most raw way at times in sharing their writing...But I need to call some limits for myself.  If I comment on one student's blog, I will feel the need to be fair and comment on every student's blog.  And it's true, I don't have 66 students the way SYA Spain does, but still, 44 blogs a day to read and comment on is too much if I want a life outside SYA.  A friend at Branson once said to me, as I daydreamed about teaching more than one English class, "Stick with the Latin if you want a life."  O, muse of teaching, grant me the sanity not to read every blog entry and the wisdom not to comment even once.  And make the students see that there is so much value in their writing writing writing even if their teacher is not reading and commenting on it.]

We left our stockings at home.  We're hoping/suggesting that Mary make us all stockings for Christmas with her newfound skills in sewing.  With the boys' birthdays in November and December, I never get to Christmas shopping early.

I want to know for whom we buy gifts so the kids have what they need at school, so Daniel and I have what we need for work.  I live carefully, never wanting to offend.  Early on, at lunch with colleagues, one Italian colleague joked, "We think of the stereotypical American treating the meal, coming in and taking care of everything, you know, rich Americans."  I adore this colleague, who is kind and generous and thoughtful and inclusive.  But since then I have not once treated even coffee for my colleagues, careful.

A friend here had her sister visiting.  The third night she was here I asked her how she was doing with jet lag and adjustment.  She said, "Good.  The culture shock has been tough, but it's getting better."  Culture shock.  I asked her what was the shock.  She said, "The language."

Culture shock is the language.  And culture is so much more, too.  I've seen videos and heard from Italians that Italians do not drink cappuccino in the afternoon; it's for breakfast and for morning.  So for a while I stopped ordering cappuccino in the afternoon and/or felt self-conscious when I did order it in the afternoon.  Eventually I thought, Well, I'm clearly not Italian even when (especially when?) I'm speaking Italian, so I'm going to order cappuccino after noon and let go the cultural norm.  Yesterday between soccer and swim pick-ups, Mary and Sebastian and I sat down for ten minutes at a bar: they got their cappuccino decaffeinato, and I got my tea.  When I went to pay afterwards (always afterwards here), I thanked the woman at the cafe for making cappuccino even though (nanostante -- I looked it up before I went to pay) it was afternoon.  She told me that no, it was fine, cappuccino is for any time of day.  She was kind, convincing, lovely.

So I am still working through so many cultural norms.  It's not that I have to fit in or that the kids need to fit in (I don't think Daniel ever worries about fitting in -- he went to a parent meeting for Sebastian's class last night, understood maybe half of what was said, and felt just fine), but I do want to be appropriate, respectful, not offend.  The kids are on their own in some ways here: they have to lead us regarding school as much as we lead them at home.  They need tissues for the bathroom at school because there is usually no toilet paper.  For birthdays, you invite the whole class or your parents bring in merenda (snack) for everyone.  I haven't given in to Nutella bars every day for snack, but we have enough in the house for once per week.

Time to get Elf on the Shelf out.

And time to get an artificial tree for our apartment.