There is no Halloween.
Without Halloween, it is hard to know when to start thinking about
Thanksgiving. But there is no
Thanksgiving. So there is no landmark to
start the insanity of Christmas, my favorite insane time of the year. On Dec. 6, local Italians will celebrate San Nicolo (sometimes called the original Santa), and I'm happy to join in because I hear it involves
gluhwein and presents for little ones. In the meantime, though, we couldn't just skip Thanksgiving, so we had our own.
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My cookies--I substituted shredded white
chocolate for both chocolate chips and frosting.
They were still pretty tasty! |
Yesterday we celebrated (late) Thanksgiving. Tom was already back in the States, so there
were eleven of us (eight Americans, one Spaniard who grew up in MA, and two
boy/girlfriends of American students).
The kids made mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, dressing, rolls, green
beans, spinach salad, stuffed mushrooms, carrots, chicken, ribs, and seven
desserts. There was no turkey, but we
didn’t miss it. The food was good but not
great—ingredients are different here, so without tons of practice it’s difficult
to make things taste like you “expect.”
I managed to make a close approximation of my favorite cookies (the
white choc and cranberry kind) that were pretty close to the US version, and
certainly good enough to eat! The
evening ended with “Elf.”
I tried to explain to our Italian/Dutch neighbors what
Thanksgiving was really about yesterday, and that it really comes down to food
and family. I enjoyed the company of the
students yesterday, and I know that they appreciated having an afternoon
together where we could all laugh about how our English changed since we
arrived (speaking primarily in the present tense, asking questions by adding
the word “yes?” at the end of a sentence) and not having to use in the metric
system (you would be surprised how often measurements come up during a normal
day). I wonder if the day made them miss
home as much as I did—not a specific place, but the company of old friends and
old jokes; playing games together and eating plenty of comfort foods.
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The extent of our holiday
decorations in Italy. |
Now that the day is over, I can officially think about
Christmas. We’ll spend the holidays in
New Jersey. I hope these two weeks pass
quickly and I can’t wait to see old friends and holiday lights and watch bad
movies on tv! I’m even almost looking
forward to finishing the holiday shopping.
Almost.
No one even has a snow shovel here, though, because this is pretty unusual, so I won't be doing any of that today! I'll just be walking around, enjoying the castles in the snow. . . 