Buon Natale!

I keep meaning to walk downtown one evening and take pictures of the lights around town, but I haven't done it. I did get one picture of the town Christmas tree in the piazza in front of the Cathedral (see below), but that's been it.


The lights are not gone, though, so I may yet make it. They do the full 12 days of Christmas here, ending with a national holiday on 6 January (Epiphany), when Befana the Christmas witch comes and fills the children's stockings with presents. We went to the store the other day and saw that all the Christmas trees and decorations were gone, but there were stockings and pictures of Befana everywhere!

Speaking of Christmas trees, they do have Christmas trees here, though their standards are not the same as in the US. Apparently, artificial trees are very popular, probably more popular than live trees. Jeff insists on a live tree, though, so we went in search of one. They don't seem to have Christmas tree lots like in the US, but nurseries and garden centers do have a small selection of trees. All live Christmas trees come with the root ball still attached, and it seems that most people put up their tree in a pot, rather than a stand, so that they can plant the tree after Christmas. The vast majority of live trees are very small, maybe 3-4 feet tall. We did manage to find one that's about 7 feet tall, but it is not very full. Jeff says that it's a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but I think it turned out pretty well once we decorated it.

I didn't use nearly the number of ornaments that I usually do, but the important ones are all on there! Jeff even rigged up our star tree topper. We had to buy new lights here because we would have had to put our old ones on a transformer to use them. We just bought the tree topper last year after much consideration and searching for something we both liked, and it was lighted. So, Jeff took it apart and inserted some of the lights from our new set, so it lights up again!

On Christmas Eve, we went out some friends' house for a little get together. It was nice to just sit and talk for a while and enjoy some yummy snacks. It was just a few families from the American contingent here. We got some good advice for the Rome trip that Jeff and I are taking at the end of this week. I hear that there is a really neat pageant downtown on Christmas Eve, including a procession through the moat of the castle to place the baby Jesus in the manger, but we didn't make it this year. Maybe next year.

We had a lovely Christmas day, though I thought Jeff would bust when Emily slept until 8:30 that morning! I wouldn't let him wake her up and he was dying to get to the presents! Here are a couple of pictures of Emily with her Santa presents.



Here are Jeff and Hamlet relaxing later on Christmas day.


We missed our families and all the festivities at home, but it was actually kind of nice to just have Christmas once this year, and not worry about all the travelling.