Christmas in Italy, 2008
surveying Todi, in a rare moment of sunshine, Dec 24, 2008
WHY:
I’m not the kind of person with friends who own holiday properties overseas - just not the circles I run in. I am however the kind of person who is prepared to rely on others’ international holiday home connections! So when my friend Judy’s friend bought a flat in the village of Todi in Italy’s central province of Umbria, I knew one day I’d have to stay there.
WHEN:
I guess I’d always dreamed that I would get there with Judy herself. Judy was also at ICLEI, the international organization, and we’d traveled several times for work. Unfortunately, but the time I was prepared to travel to Todi, it was five years after Judy’s untimely cancer death. I decided it would be a good choice for a Christmas vacation, and Greg, my Christmas companion, was keen to join me. That was 2008.
WHO:
Greg was living in the UK, and so we connected up in the Rome airport, giggling as we saw each other in the arrivals area, counting as we always did the number of airports we’ve met in. There are few people whom I can travel with and Greg is one of them. While our lives have taken very different directions, literally and metaphorically, we have a shared travel sensibility and see the absurdity of the same things.
MEMORABLE MOMENTS:
We arrived on December 23, and drove north to the town of Todi and find our home for a week, the Borgo Medieval at Torro Gentile, a short drive out of Todi. We were delighted with the balance of rustic and modern of the town and of our place. We had, as we often do, absolutely no agenda for the week. Hiking up and down the narrow stone streets of Todi, I saw a Christmas Eve service at one of the many Catholic Churches. Not the big church - this one was on a side street. I hoped it would be a more interesting and local experience and I wasn’t disappointed. We were given the Italian side-eye by everyone as we sat through the service in a tongue we could not decipher and belted out carols (those familiar) with our English lyrics, not those being sung by everyone else. A terrific kick-off to a week of heavy Catholicism for two who could at best be called cultural-Protestants.
The Borgo was an old villa divided into holiday flats like ours. In the summer, travellers use a pool and enjoy walking in the countryside. For us, though, solitude was the key amenity. Solitude but for some cats roaming through the complex. Despite strict instructions in the guest guide NOT to allow cats inside, one wormed her way into my heart, and before long, into our unit - just for visits and the odd snack, it’s not like we invited her to sleep in our beds or anything! She needed a name and I had run across the best name recently in the course of my work so my Italian cat got dubbed Juniper Locilento. I think we can all agree that is a pretty darned good name for a street cat in an Italian villa, right?
One last memorable moment was waking up to snow on Boxing Day. We’d had some dreary weather since we’d landed in Rome - not cold, not warm, not sunny, not rainy. Just grim. So the blanket of December snow was gorgeous! We hunkered down for the day with wine, pasta, and cards. Not that dissimilar to Huron County Christmas really.
WHAT DID I LEARN:
This was next-level learning in my seemingly unending need to know more about how Roman Catholics celebrate holidays. I was particularly fascinated by the abundance of nativity scenes. Whether life-sized figures in Assisi to ceramic ones in Deruta, to Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and lowing cows fashioned from pizza dough in Orvieto, finding them became my preoccupation, foreshadowing my current obsession with inflatable Santas! (See The Rate of Inflatables from 2021).
Finally, I learned that the best time to explore places Christian tourists go is the time when they are home celebrating with their families. We flew along the highway to Orvieto, left our car alone in the parking lot, and walked the empty streets as everyone else ate pasta with nonna and nonno. St. Francis’ church in Assisi was open but all-but deserted on Boxing Day, avoiding the queues we’d doubtless face any other time of the year. Florence, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Italy, was navigable on December 27, when we saw David and the Duomo with no wait-times. And even the square at the Vatican, where we went on December 30 enroute back to our respective cities.
It’s possible I’ll never end up in Italy again - there are just so many other places to go. But I will always remember that great week there over Christmas, a welcome slow-down from a frantic December.
For those who celebrate, I wish you all a relaxed holiday. Find yourself a street cat to befriend!
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