Christmas Time in the City

Christmas time just hit this year and I'll be honest, it didn't feel the same as in America. However I still had a great time here and enjoyed it very much.

One tradition I have to mention is their manger scenes. They are crazy and take this concept to a whole new level. I wish I could include a picture but my phone has passed away and I can't access my pictures at the moment. Basically, they are huge and portray a whole village. It is typically hand made. Its called a "Presepe".

For me, Christmas really lasted three days, not one. On Christmas Eve, we went to spend the evening at my Aunt Rita's home in a city very close to Matera. We ate dinner there, played some games, then exchanged gifts. At midnight, all of the girls in the house went upstairs and did this walk around the house while singing a song and carrying the baby Jesus from the presepe. While we did this, Babbo Natale (Santa Claus) delivered the presents. I was very caught off guard because no one explained this tradition to me so I was just going along with it basically. It was probably very funny to watch me while we did this. In Italy, they open their gifts at midnight, not in the morning. So this was very strange for me when we went home and opened our gifts in the middle of the night instead of in the morning. My mom sent gifts from America for my family and me and I'm pretty sure they liked them so I'm very happy about this.

Christmas day, we had the main lunch at my house. Almost everyone from our family came, but some could only stop by and then went to a different relatives house. We ate appetizers, then oven cooked pasta, and then lamb. I had never had lamb before and it tasted very different than any other meat I'd ever eaten. It was okay but I didn't like it too much. Then we had a lot of desserts. I was so full I felt like I was going to throw up, but I didn't. Later, we played a game called Tombola, which is like a different version of bingo. This is known to be a game you play during the holidays. Usually people play with money, but we played with chocolate. I won one chocolate and one of our cousins won like eight. I'm very glad we didn't play with money. 

Even the day after Christmas, we went over to a relatives house. We went to my Uncle Cosimo's house so we could also celebrate with them, because they weren't able to come to our house the day before. They have a really big cool presepe that is so detailed, it's crazy! We ate a lot of food (as usual) and while we were eating I couldn't help but feel like a child because I couldn't really understand everything that everyone was saying. Everyone is so nice to me and they accidentally treat me like a child because of this. It kind of sucks sometimes because I do understand a lot of things I hear, but I can't always put together my own sentences so I can't respond in the way I want to. Later, after lunch, my two cousins and my host sister taught me how to play two games using playing cards from Naples. It was a little complicated because none of the cards had numbers, just pictures. People also usually play with money, but we didn't. My cousin said that he played this with his friends and won €17 the weekend before. My host mom, host sister, and me went to visit and older aunt that lives in the same complex as my cousins. (It's similar to a gated community but also kind of like an apartment complex) There were three older ladies that I met there and they were so sweet and kept offering us chocolate. Then after that, we walked to the house of another great Aunt that lives close to the Sassi. With her was another aunt that I had met before in Rome (its a very confusing family tree) The great Aunt was so cute because she kept trying to speak in English with me and she was telling me about how much she wants to improve her English. She went on about how every time she hears English, she looks it up in her English-Italian dictionary. She offered us desserts that someone in her family makes and they were super delicious! At the end of the day we went home and just had a normal rest of the day. 

I started my winter break just recently so I have a lot more time to do the things I want. As always if you have any questions, just let me know in the comments or message me :)
Imogen Wyatt