Advent thoughts
Below the fold: We know what St. Nicholas looked like - Icons are trustworthy
How to live in a small town in Umbria - combatting isolation
In the last couple of months, I’ve made a point of shopping in the village small shops for the things I need as much as possible, instead of taking the bus down the mountain to go to the big supermarkets in Narni Scalo1. It lets me get out of the house in the morning while the sun is still strong, get the exercise of hiking the shopping in the backpack up the 50 metres of stone stairs, interacting in a friendly way with my neighbours. Being normal. A therapeutic exercise.
The little shops on top of the mountain in the village are a little pricier, of course than the big supermarkets down on the flat. We have three small general stores; an orto-frutta for your fruit and veg and eggs from local farms; an excellent butcher shop, again all local meat, eggs and dairy; Alvaro’s Animalandia, the trusty pet supply; a pasticceria, where they put too much sugar in the sweets but make the best pandoro and panpepato…
Alessandro’s refurbished 13th century forno - a bake shop for bread and focaccia; a ferramenta; a cartolaria for printing, scanning and copying (she sells pretty decent mid-quality drawing paper too). There is an abundance of “lady shops” - an Italian thing where you can buy ladies’ underthings, sheets and pillowcases, tea towels, and some sewing/knitting/crochet stuff. And at least five hairdressers. You can get by a surprisingly long time without having to go down the mountain with just those things.
From sitting at my usual outdoor table in the Piazza Garibaldi. It was quite chilly this morning by Italian standards. I could see my breath on the air, even in the sunny spots. This is the “outside” piazza. Through that archway (the Roman Via Flaminia) is the inside town, which is older and much less busy, the original settlement who-knows-when that the Romans conquered in 299 BC. All the most useful shops in town are outside the old city wall (which you can catch a glimpse of through the arch) and that seems to be the jollier and more bustly place to be.
Then I usually get a coffee or a hot milk and a piece of pinsa (like pizza but better) to serve as lunch, at the Garibaldi bar in the piazza in preparation for the hike back up the stairs.
The secret to life in small town Italy is to get acquainted with the locals. Or at least, to let the locals get used to seeing you on the daily rounds. Pick a bar and go there a lot; get to know the people who run it and hang out at it. More to the point, get known by them. Once you’ve got a friendly acquaintance with your bar, you have a door to everything else. Need someone to come fix your electrical sockets? Need to know where the English speaking dentist is? Need some firewood? Want to know a good place to go swimming in the hot weather? Ask the ladies at the bar - they know everyone and everyone knows them.
In each shop you meet and interact with the same people, usually a family and usually people who live a few metres away from you. Your neighbours. When you go into the shop every week or a couple of times a week, they start to light up and greet you like a friend when you walk in. You can walk past the shop and wave and get a wave back. They start to learn who you are and you learn who they are. They “friend” you on Facebook, and then other people who live a few metres away from you “friend” you as well. Then one day you have come down to the shops and found you’ve left your wallet in your other bag, and they say, “Oh, just catch me next time…”
One day, the old ladies or old gents who sit on the sunny (or shady) benches outside the Duomo or around the piazza, monitoring the town, will put their heads together when you walk by, and you’ll know that word has spread. There’s the English lady who rented Massimo’s place up on the hill… She’s a painter…
This is all how you sink into a place and become part of it. Some day, who knows, I might earn a spot on one of those benches myself.
On non-shopping days, a walk around the castle. At the top, a spectacular view, your neighbours hanging out with the kids, walking dogs and taking strolls.
How to avoid post-Christmas let-down and Black January - leaning into Advent
When I was a kid, I usually felt pretty let down by Christmas. A month or more of frantic build-up and it was all over the next day, with the precious and magical Christmas trees lying on the sidewalk on Boxing Day looking like corpses of the holiday. I think a lot of people feel this way, with New Year’s Eve being just an excuse to have a party for no particularly good reason, and a month of anxiety over credit card bills and dark afternoons. Scrooge expects us back in the office all the earlier the next day. Suicide rates go up in January all over the western 1st World.
I’m finally getting a feel for Italian Christmas aesthetics. These guys are called “zampognari” - traditional mountain shepherds - Abruzzo, Molise, Umbria, Le Marche - who play the zampogna, the Italian version of bagpipes. Since the 17th century, this is the tradition where they would come down out of their mountains at Advent, and play in the shops in the villages and earn a few tips and a hot drink. The younger people are reviving the custom.
Whatever happened, they say, to the 12 Days of Christmas you hear about in the carols? Why did it seem so much jollier in the old days, the Before Time?
In the post-Protestant Anglo 1st World, we might remember the skeleton of the liturgical year, but no longer have it as the framework of our lives, especially our social lives. We have forgotten that it is a complete cycle, covering every moment of the year.
You are here
I felt post-Christmas let-down most of my life until I figured out that the secret is to lean into Advent as its own thing, and to flip Christmas back where it should be, to make it an actual festa to look forward to, instead of just being all build-up to nothing. Christmas runs from December 25th, through Epiphany, to its final extremity of Candlemas, tree-down day February 2nd. No more Black January.
And if you let it all go on until then, you’re ready for Septuagesima.
I use Advent to build up to the Christmas festa, and get very domestic. Advent wreaths are difficult to get south of the Alps, but you can make one.
But since it’s Italy, I bring out the presepe, and put it up a little at a time.
Maybe start with the manger and a few sheep on the 1st Sunday. Second Sunday, add the ox and ass (and in my case the moose). Third, pink Sunday, Mary and Joseph appear. On Christmas Eve, before going to bed, the Angel appears. Save Baby Jesus for the morning of.
Similarly with the tree. Since Christmas trees aren’t really an Italian thing, they can be impossible to find after mid-December, so I usually have a potted tree. In Italy it’s easier to get one at the garden centre early in December, with the root ball attached and already in a pot of soil. This means you can keep it outside until it’s the proper time. If you’re careful (keep it out of the sun, water daily make sure it’s in the shade in summer, and gets a bigger pot each year with plenty of fertiliser in the spring) you can keep a tree like this alive for years.
The week before Christmas I bring it inside to the workroom for a few days to dry. Then put it in its spot in the sitting room and decorate on Christmas Eve. I like to make a little ritual on Christmas morning - put the star on the tree, and Baby Jesus in the manger.
Advent is a good time to make your own decorations too, doing them slowly a bit at a time over the whole season. I’ve found myself getting tired of the usual plastic made-in-China sparkly stuff. Like everyone, I’ve got the normal box of red plastic bobbles, that look nice enough. But I made a point of buying a few pricier hand blown glass ornaments, and people have given me some unique, and often odd, little things, and it feels very special to pull them out of their tissue wrappings in their boxes, and hang them.
It’s OK around here to take a pair of secateurs and hike up the hill into the woods and cut a few branches of greenery, some sprigs of ivy which grows everywhere. Sometimes you get lucky and a tree has blown down, or been cut.
I like to make my own wreath, the workroom strewn from wall to wall with bits of the outdoors, ribbons and bobbles, and gold pigment dusted all over everything.
The oratorio in the workroom gets fluffier every year.
You can save yourself all manner of agony at Christmas if you do a lot of the Christmas cooking ahead during Advent too. If you’ve got a big freezer chest, all the better.
Things that freeze well: bone broth and soups and stews, pies and all sorts of sauces.
Keep it secret and small - some ideas
Of course, Advent is a time for holding back, for small fasting, little abstinences, a little self-denial, small, secret alms-givings:
There are all manner of Advent prayers in the Divine Office, the Missal. Maybe pick one, maybe a Psalm or a responsory, or a collect or antiphon from the Breviary or similar, and start the day with a few moments by yourself in the prayer corner.
If you see the door to the local parish open, pop in for a few quiet moments.
Instead of buying a Christmas sweet, pick up a few tins of lentils or tomatoes or something nutritious and drop them in the parish poor hamper when no one’s looking.
Set up a monthly direct debit payment to a favourite charity.
If you don’t already, keep a Rosary or a prayer rope in your pocket and in moments where you have to wait for something, say the Jesus prayer a few times.
Basically, the secret to avoiding post-Christmas let-down and Black January, is to put it in the right order, to make it again an important feast by holding back a little in Advent. If you’ve saved Christmas for its proper time, then when all around you are having the let-down, you can invite them over for something to eat and hot to drink, to cheer them up. Who cares if they think you’re a weirdo? Christmas parties in January? They’ll be up for it. Who wouldn’t?
Why do we recognise this face?
I thought today we could just have an easygoing post. Below the fold I have a follow-up of sorts to our post last week about the connection between icons of Christ and the Shroud of Turin. A fascinating set of investigations in the 20th century of the skeletal remains of St. Nicholas of Myra showed us again that the iconographic tradition is a reliable record of the real appearance of our saints.
I’ve also found a wonderful high resolution image of St. Nicholas from a glorious 15th century French manuscript, a book of hours, which I’m happy to make available as a PDF printable download for paid members.
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This week, we’ll look together at the great flowering and revival of monastic and lay mysticism and spirituality that we call the 12th Century Renaissance, after a century of total breakdown and near collapse, a “golden age” that came out of a deliberate reform. How did we come out of the “Saeculum Obscurum” - of the 10th century, the “dark age” of corruption and evil men in the Church? If it could be done then, can we do it again now? If so, how?
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