A DAY OF GIFTS

It's getting on for five years since Italy banned the distribution of plastic carrier bags in shops but I'm still the only person in Modica who carries a shopping bag. I'm also the only person who walks everywhere. People do now produce fabric shopping bags from their car boots or the depths of their handbags to use at the checkout but they wouldn't be seen dead carrying them any further than the distance from the supermarket doors to their cars unless they were by Prada! Therefore I shouldn't really have been surprised when, walking into the hairdresser's this afternoon carrying a rather inelegant shopper, I was greeted with a firm, "Questa borsa non va" ["That bag won't do"] and was then presented with this prettier [and seasonal] substitute:

Two of my students have just come back from London and have seen to it that I do not lack one British essential:

And I have finally imbibed enough cups of coffee in the bar opposite to be rewarded with this rather snazzy cup and saucer:

A very pleasant day!

ALL I WANT FOR XMAS....

Football's - and my - favourite Sicilian naughty boy, Mario Balotelli, has some difficulty when it comes to gift-wrapping and blames being left-handed:

But give the guy a break - he's probably never had to do it! In Italy you hardly ever have to gift-wrap as almost all shops will do it for you, at no extra charge, all year round.  I brought this roll of festive wrap with me from Britain seven years ago [having been at that "might as well throw it in" point with the move] and I think it's going to last a few more Christmases yet:

If that team manager of yours  [you can tell he's Italian too by the elegant way he ties his scarves] would like to gift-wrap you, Mario, I'll be very happy to unwrap you on Christmas morning.  Sigh....

GIFTS

I am writing this post in response to the Italy Blogging Roundtable group's invitation to post on Italy-related gifts. 

In Italy this is the Christmas of sobrietà or austerity so I wonder just how many people here will be echoing the words of one Josephine March in those oh-so-famous opening lines of Little Women:

" 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."

Well, it depends, I suppose, on what you mean by austerity and how you think of gifts.  If austerity means not going mad at Christmas, Italians tend not to anyway:  Sure, the children receive presents but not by the sackful and the festival is not regarded as a contest to be won by the family who can provide the biggest, most expensive and greatest quantity of gifts.

No one worries weeks or months ahead about the task of feeding their relatives, as that is something they do most Sundays and the task of producing the festive meal is not turned into a kitchen marathon which leaves the poor hostess in need of valium, a gallon of gin and a spa cure lasting at least a month.  

When you are invited to someone's house over the holiday, you take along something to eat - usually a dessert -  and a pensiero or small gift if you like.  [Pensiero = thought; telling, isn't it?]  But your Italian host will already regard your company as a gift and all he or she really wants is for you to relax and enjoy yourself.

Next year marks the twentieth anniversary of my association with Sicily, the region which I now call home and over these years I have received many gifts from my Sicilian friends:  Every Christmas, when I was in the UK, my friend Gina used to send a package of the white torrone [nougat] that I like and other friends would send little mementoes of Sicily that I treasured:  an ornament, a book, a candle scented with orange blossom.  And at Christmas 1994 two friends gave me a Sicily map pendant which I wear nearly every day.  "We want you to always have Sicily close to your heart", they said and so it is.

The little girl who gave me this tree decoration in 1993 is now a confident woman of 26 and I don't suppose she remembers that Christmas at all.  But I do and it is enough:

Recently a friend gave me this bauble from Caltagirone, the pottery town and as I look at it on my tree this year I am reminded of my first visit there:

Two years ago my friend Lucia, scandalised that I didn't have a crib, brought me these figures:

Every Sicilian home displays a crib at Christmas and often the figurines are family heirlooms.  Sicilians like to place typical figures from the recent past in their cribs and we have a famous and beautiful example of this tradition in Modica's Church of Santa Maria di Betlem:

In Sicily you learn that the past is also the present and I am so grateful to my friends here for that lesson, at no time more evident than during the Christmas I travelled to Segesta with Irma and her family.  As we walked through a Greek house, Irma and I mused upon the women who had lived there and wondered what their dreams had been - not so very different from ours, we concluded. 

Christmas, as the March girls discovered, is about finding joy in the company you have and the most precious gift I have received from my Sicilian friends is the love with which they surround me.

The Italy Blogging Roundtable blogs are:  ArtTrav, At Home in Tuscany, Why Go Italy, Italofile and Brigolante.  I'm sure you'll enjoy their posts on this subject and many others.